Now round every corner his besmudged face would be appearing, his inky fingers protruding, his voice triumphantly proclaiming:
“I’m coming with you now, Cole. There’s an hour before prep.”
And strangely now, in spite of himself, Jeremy liked it. He was suddenly touched by young Baltimore and his dirt and his helplessness. Later years were to prove that Jeremy Cole could be always caught, held and won by something misshapen, abused, cast out by society. So now he was caught by young Baltimore. He did his sums for him (when he could—he was no great hand at sums), protected him from Tubby Smith, the bully of the lower fourth, shepherded him in and out of meals, took him for walks on Sunday afternoons. . . .
He was losing Riley. That hurt him desperately. Nevertheless he continued in his serious, entirely unsentimental way to look after Baltimore.
And was young Baltimore grateful? We shall see.
III
One day when the summer term was about a month old a very dreary game of cricket was pursuing its slow course in third game. The infants concerned in it were sleepily watching the efforts of one after another of their number to bowl Corkery Minimus. Corkery was not, as cricket is considered at Lord’s, a great cricketer, but he was a stolid, phlegmatic youth, too big for third game and too lazy to wake up and so push forward into second. He stood stolidly at his wicket, making a run or two occasionally in order to poach the bowling. Jeremy was sitting in the pavilion, his cap tilted forward over his eyes, nearly asleep, and praying that Corkery might stay in all the afternoon and so save him from batting. One of the younger masters, Newsom, a youth fresh from Cambridge, was presiding over the afternoon and longing for six o’clock.
Suddenly he heard a thin and weedy voice at his ear:
“Please, sir, do you think I might bowl? I think I could get him out.”
Newsom pulled himself in from his dreams and gazed wearily down upon the grimy face of Baltimore.