On the match being resumed at two o'clock, with four hundred lines on the score-sheet, he had played a fine, free game during afternoon school, and Mr Dexter, who objected to fine, free games—or, indeed, any games—during school hours, had increased the total to six hundred, when stumps were drawn for the day.
So on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon, when he should have been out in the field cheering the house-team on to victory against the School House, Jackson sat in the junior day-room at Dexter's copying out portions of Virgil, Aeneid Two.
To him, later on in the afternoon, when he had finished half his task, entered Painter, with the news that Dexter's had taken thirty points off the School House just after half-time.
"Mopped them up," said the terse and epigrammatic Painter. "Made rings round them. Haven't you finished yet? Well, chuck it, and come out."
"What's on?" asked Jackson.
"We're going to have a boat race."
"Pile it on."
"We are, really. Fact. Some of these School House kids are awfully sick about the match, and challenged us. That chap Tomlin thinks he can row.
"He can't row for nuts," said Jackson. "He doesn't know which end of the oar to shove into the water. I've seen cats that could row better than Tomlin."
"That's what I told him. At least, I said he couldn't row for toffee, so he said all right, I bet I can lick you, and I said I betted he couldn't, and he said all right, then, let's try, and then the other chaps wanted to join in, so we made an inter-house thing of it. And I want you to come and stroke us."