"Oh!" gasped Bunny, on the substitutes' bench. It was like the cry from some hurt.
No shrill of the referee's whistle marked the foul. Clearly, the official had been watching the flight of the ball, rather than the two opposing players who had leaped for it as it fell, and had thus failed to detect any unfair interference.
But the spectators had seen. A little hiss of disapproval grew to a buzzing growl, like a tiny breeze that nods the daisies in a distant field and snarls through the bushes as it comes close.
Kiproy bent to make a pass. Sheffield held up a staying hand.
"Wait!" he called. In the tense silence that followed, Bunny could hear him clearly. "I interfered with that toss-up—unintentionally; jabbed the Elkana center with my elbow. Call a foul, Referee!"
The noise broke anew, but it was the clapping of hands this time, and the stamping of feet and little shouts of approval, like a rollicking gale at play. Bunny looked out at Sheffield, through what seemed queerly like a fog, and said, "Oh, that's fine!" And even when some Elkana fellow was given a free trial for goal and netted a basket, he repeated, "Yes, that's fine!" At that moment, he liked Sheffield more than he ever had before.
Over at the blackboard, the boy rubbed out the ten under Elkana's name and traced an eleven in its place. Lakeville's total was still eight.
Sheffield outjumped the opposing center on the next toss-up, which was free of any semblance of foul, and whacked the ball to Barrett. Peter whirled completely around, to throw off the guard hovering in front of him, and started a dribble. But just as he was ready to make the pass, some Elkana player stepped in and captured the ball. It was not an unusual incident, but it made Bunny squirm. Peter had been just the tick of a watch too slow.
After that, things began steadily to go wrong. The four players who had been in the tank started to shrink when they should have charged, to submit weakly to an opponent's making a pass when they should have scrimmaged for a toss-up, to be always the tiny fraction of a second too late in catching, shooting, dodging. Elkana scored. It scored again. After perhaps three minutes of play in the second half, the figures on the blackboard read: Lakeville, 8; Elkana, 15.