Jeremy managed to keep himself out of most of these adventures. He had the gift of concentrating utterly on the matter in hand, and the matter in hand this term was getting into the first fifteen. He went in most conscientiously for training, running round Big Field before First Hour, refusing various foods that he longed to enjoy, and refusing to smoke blotting paper on Sunday afternoon in Parker’s Wood. People jeered at him for all this seriousness, and, had he made a public business of his sporting conscience, he might have earned a good deal of unpopularity. But he said very little about it and behaved in every way like an ordinary mortal.
Luckily for him, his school work that term was easy. He had been for two terms in the Lower Fourth, and now was near the top of it, and inevitably at the end of this term would be moved out of it. Malcolm, his form master, liked him, being himself a footballer of no mean size. It was not, therefore, until the end of the first fortnight that Jeremy discovered that something very serious was going forward between his two dormitory companions, something in which he was not asked to share. They whispered together continually, and the whispering took the form of Stokesley persuading Pug over and over again. “Oh, come on, Pug. Don’t spoil sport.” “You’re afraid—yes, you are. You’re a funk.” “I can’t do it without you. Of course I can’t.” “We’ll never have a chance again.”
At last Jeremy, who had more than his natural share of curiosity, could endure it no longer. He sat on the edge of his bed, kicking his naked toes, and cried:
“I say, you two, what’s all this about? You might let me in.”
“It’s nothing to do with you, Stocky. You go to sleep.”
“You’d much better tell me. You know I never sneak.”
“This is too important to let a kid like you know about it.”
“I’m not such a kid, if it comes to that. Perhaps I can help?”
“No, you can’t. You shut your mouth and go to sleep.”
Two nights later than this, however, Jeremy was told.