"Keep yourself fiddle-fit for the re-played Final, Dick, boy, so that this time your hefty foot may on no account miss the target.
"Your chummy Aunt,
"BELLA."
The donation, of course, was liberal, and it really seemed as though the sun-rays of prosperity were doing their utmost to dazzle Dick's eyes of late.
The financial foundation of the Rooke's House Rag was now firm. Its new issue, fresh in style and throbbing with life, infected the school with the light-heartedness of its editors, and did something more to restore the Captain to the popularity which he had previously enjoyed. Boys love the hero of an adventure. His star was in the ascendant again, and as it rose, the star of Luke Harwood sank. Even the Head seemed to be losing interest in Luke, and "Wykeham's Pet Fox" felt that the title no longer fitted him as he roamed about the school, his uneasiness ill-concealed beneath his habitual mask of composure.
For weeks he had succeeded in avoiding close contact with Dick, there being a straight look of inquiry in the Captain's eyes whenever their glances met, which the Editor of the Foxonian found disturbing. But he could not for ever succeed in giving Dick a wide berth, and there came a time, shortly after a football practice, when the Captain stood directly in his path, and no one else was about to whom he could hang on for safety.
Making a virtue of necessity, therefore, he favoured Dick with a slow, sweet smile.
"Team seems in wonderful form just now—should make no mistake about the re-play," he commented.
"I'm not so sanguine as you appear to be, Harwood. Much depends on circumstances. We can't, for instance, afford such another nasty little accident as that which occurred in the last match."
"Most unfortunate, as I said in the Foxonian at the time," murmured Luke. "Still, who could have foreseen the freakish action of an idiot?"
"Was it a freakish action, do you think? Or did somebody quietly put him up to it?"