"Fair. Burke was better. Tried him on the end. 'Lo, Mr. Lorimer. 'Lo, Carter!"
"I've got a poem here you'll all like," said Stephen Lorimer. "No, you needn't shuffle your feet, Jimsy. It's your kind. Sit down, all of you. I'll read it."
"So long as it hasn't got any 'whate'ers' and yestereves' and 'beauteous,'" the last King grinned. "Shoot!"
"It's an English thing, by Henry Newbolt,—about cricket, but that doesn't matter. It's the thing itself. I may not have the words exactly,—I read it over there, and copied it down in my diary, from memory." He looked at the boys and the girl; Honor was waiting eagerly, sure of anything he might bring her; Jimsy King, fresh from the sweating realities of the gridiron, was good-humoredly tolerant; Carter Van Meter was courteously attentive, with his oddly mature air of social poise. He began to read, to recite, rather, his eyes on their faces:
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,
Ten to make and the match to win;
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in,
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat