“Oh, that will be all right when you’ve had your breakfast. Mine aches too. Look sharp. It’s ever so late.”
I tried to look sharp, but I’m afraid I looked very blunt, and it took me a long time to get dressed and down-stairs, and out in the fresh morning air, where I walked up and down a bit, and then suffered myself to be led into the play-field to see what a splendid tent had been raised, with its canvas back close up to the hedge which separated the Doctor’s grounds from the farm, with the intervening dry ditch, which always seemed to be full of the biggest stinging nettles I ever saw.
It was a glorious morning, the turf was short and beautifully level, the boys having joined hands the previous night to drag the great roller well over it. But the sunshine, the blue sky, and the delicious green of the hedges and trees were all nothing to me then, and I let Mercer chatter on about the chances of the other side, which, as far as I was concerned, promised to be excellent.
The breakfast-bell rang, and we went in, but that morning meal did not fulfil Mercer’s prophecy and carry off my ailment, for I could not touch a bit.
“Oh, you are a fellow!” cried my comrade. “Well; perhaps you are right. My father says it’s best not to eat and drink when you have a bad headache. But look sharp and get well; the chaps will be over in good time.”
By and by the news reached the captain of our eleven, and he came to me all smiles and civility, for all Burr major’s ideas of revenge seemed to have died out, as I thought, because I never presumed upon my victory.
“Oh, I say, Burr junior,” he cried, “this won’t do! You must look sharp and get well.”
“I want to,” I replied dolefully; “but I’m afraid I shan’t be able to play.”
“But you must. If you don’t, they’ll be sure to beat us, and that would be horrid.”
“You mustn’t let them beat you,” I said, wishing all the while that he would go, for my head throbbed more than ever, and varied it with a sensation as of hot molten lead running round inside my forehead in a way that was agonising.