“Yes, I can--anybody could. I’m sorry. But you won’t hurt Steggles if I go?” said M.
“No; I promise. Say we’re on the road and shall be there in ten--ten-- Go!”
M. took the hint and rode off, with Steggles frisking beside her, like the dog he was.
“Thank the Lord!” said Mathers. Then horrid things happened both to him and me.
We crawled to the match more dead than alive and found a crowd waiting, and Browne and several of the other masters. We were fully twenty minutes late. “This is very unsportsmanlike, the days being so short too!” Browne squeaked. Then we took off our coats and tottered into the field of play.
Of course Buckland Grammar School won. Our side would have done a long way better without us. I couldn’t take a pass or shoot for the life of me--it occupied all my time wrestling with nature, let alone the Bucklanders. And Mathers, who played back, was worse. The roughs “guyed” him, and asked him what he’d been drinking. If they’d asked him what he’d been smoking there might have been some sense in it. He told me afterwards that he often saw three footballs at one time when he tried to kick, and sometimes four, and the ball he kicked always turned out to be an apparition. Bradwell kept goal grandly too; but it was no good with Mathers like that, and he utterly ruined Ashby Major, the other back.
Nubbs had gone to bed when we got back, and the matron, knowing Nubbs had a tricky system, sent for Doctor Barnes. Nubbs, therefore, gave himself away.
M. never looked at any of us again, and she and Steggles undoubtedly became frightful pals; but the next term, just before Easter, I had the pleasure of writing a fine letter to Mathers, who had left Merivale, and was reading for six months with a private tutor before going to Cambridge. This is part of the letter:
“Dear Mathers,” I wrote, “you will be interested to know that Browne has come down on Steggles at last. I fancy Browne knew the Doctor was fairly sick of Steggles and wanted to be rid of him. In fact, I heard the Doctor call Steggles a canker-worm myself. Anyway, Browne blew up on the smoking, and Steggles will soon probably vanish, like the dew upon the fleece. M. cried a bit, I fancy, when she heard it, but Nubbs says she smiled at him two mornings afterwards coming out of chapel. Nubbs expects to crack (his voice) any day, but he hopes to get a definite understanding with M. before it happens. It’ll be too late after. Of course she never looks at me. She told Steggles, and he told me, that she could not possibly care for a person she had once seen the hue of a Liberty Art Fabric--meaning me. I scragged Steggles after he told me. But it is all over now. I believe he is to go into his father’s business--Steggles & Stote, Wine Merchants. M. is more beautiful than ever, though I’m afraid she’s got a bad disposition. To reflect on a fellow’s color at such a time as that was a bit rough.”