There was an awkward pause. Then Pip said—
"I'm—I'm awfully sorry, sir."
Hanbury understood, and he glowed inwardly to think that the first feeling of this small boy, whose very soul was wrung by the knowledge that he had received his first chance in life and thrown it away, should be one of regret for having disappointed his teacher rather than one of commiseration for himself. Mr. Hanbury was still young and very human, and he felt glad that he had read Pip aright, and not pinned his faith to the wrong sort of boy.
"My dear man," he said, "you did exactly what I expected you to do—no more and no less. You bowled erratically and fielded splendidly." (The idea that he had fielded well had never occurred to Pip.) "I was sorry about the bowling, but I knew you must go through the experience. The best bowler in the world never remembered to bowl with his head his first match. He just did what you did—shut his eyes and plugged them in as hard as he could."
Pip nodded. That was exactly what he had done.
"That's what I meant when I told you the other day that your education was not half completed. I meant that you might be able to knock over a stump at a net all day and yet not be able to keep your head before a crowd. You will do well now you have found your feet. You fielded like a man yesterday, and you'll bowl like a demon to-morrow. I expect great things of you, so keep your tail up, young man, and—By Jove, I promised to see Mr. Mortimer before nine! Excuse me a moment."
Ham bolted from the room.
For Pip, the imperturbable, the impenetrable, was—horresco referens—in tears! After all, he was barely fifteen, and he had endured a good deal already—the quiet disappointment of Marsh, the thinly veiled scorn of the deposed Elliott, and the half-amused contempt of the rest of the house. He had taken them all in his usual impassive way, and the critics who gathered in knots after the game and condemned Marsh for putting "an absolute kid" into the House Eleven, never suspected that the "kid" in question was struggling, beneath an indifferent exterior, between an intense desire for sympathy and a stubborn determination not to show it. And so these words from his beloved Ham, from whom he had expected at the best disappointed silence, brought to his overwrought soul that relief which he so badly needed; and a large tear, trickling down his nose, warned Mr. Hanbury to remember a pressing engagement elsewhere.
Pip soon recovered.
"Lucky Ham had to go out then," he soliloquised, "or he'd have seen me blub."