“I don’t know. If you keep them in too tight they’ll burst. I think he’s right to give them some play.”
“Well, perhaps you’re right, Cress; but I’m afraid I shan’t be as easy with them as Ponty. My opinion is, that if you give them an inch they’ll take an ell. By the way, that was a queer thing about Pledge. Did you expect it?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. He’s a low cad—poor Forbes owed his expulsion last term to him, I’m positive. He simply set himself to drag him down, and he did it.”
“Pity he’s such a good bowler, one’s bound to keep him in the eleven, and the fellows always swear by the eleven. By the way, I hear we have our work cut out for us at Grandcourt this year. They’re a hot lot, and we play them on their own ground this time.”
“Oh, we shall do it, if only Ponty will wake up.”
These two enthusiasts for the good of Templeton would have been a good deal afflicted had they seen what the burly captain of the school was doing at that moment.
He was sitting in his easy-chair, the picture of comfort, with his feet up on the window-ledge, reading “Pickwick,” and laughing as he read. No sign of care was on his brow, and apparently no concern for Templeton was weighing on his mind; and even when a fag entered and brought him up a list of names of boys requiring his magisterial correction, he ordered him to put it on the table, and never even glanced at it for the next hour.
Pontifex, it is true, did not do himself justice. He passed for even more easy-going than he was, and when he did choose to make an effort—few fellows could better deal with the duties that fell to his lot. But, unfortunately, he didn’t make the effort often enough either for the good of Templeton or his own credit.
He was getting to the end of his chapter when the door opened again, and Pledge entered.
“Hallo,” said the captain, looking up after a bit, “you came a cropper, I say, this afternoon. What have you been up to?”