"Good business," said the men of Blair. "Wonder who we'll play in the second round."
They left the field marvelling. For some unaccountable reason, Dencroft's had flatly refused to act in the good old way as a doormat for their opponents. Instead, they had played with a dash and knowledge of the game which for the first quarter of an hour quite unnerved Blair's. In that quarter of an hour they scored three times, and finished the game with two goals and three tries to their name.
The School looked on it as a huge joke. "Heard the latest?" friends would say on meeting one another the day after the game. "Kay's—I mean Dencroft's—have won a match. They simply sat on Blair's. First time they've ever won a house-match, I should think. Blair's are awfully sick. We shall have to be looking out."
Whereat the friend would grin broadly. The idea of Dencroft's making a game of it with his house tickled him.
When Dencroft's took fifteen points off Mulholland's, the joke began to lose its humour.
"Why, they must be some good," said the public, startled at the novelty of the idea. "If they win another match, they'll be in the final!"
Kay's in the final! Cricket? Oh, yes, they had got into the final at cricket, of course. But that wasn't the house. It was Fenn. Footer was different. One man couldn't do everything there. The only possible explanation was that they had improved to an enormous extent.
Then people began to remember that they had played in scratch games against the house. There seemed to be a tremendous number of fellows who had done this. At one time or another, it seemed, half the School had opposed Dencroft's in the ranks of a scratch side. It began to dawn on Eckleton that in an unostentatious way Dencroft's had been putting in about seven times as much practice as any other three houses rolled together. No wonder they combined so well.
When the School House, with three first fifteen men in its team, fell before them, the reputation of Dencroft's was established. It had reached the final, and only Blackburn's stood now between it and the cup.
All this while Blackburn's had been doing what was expected of them by beating each of their opponents with great ease. There was nothing sensational about this as there was in the case of Dencroft's. The latter were, therefore, favourites when the two teams lined up against one another in the final. The School felt that a house that had had such a meteoric flight as Dencroft's must—by all that was dramatic—carry the thing through to its obvious conclusion, and pull off the final.