“What do you mean?” exclaimed Loman, angrily, and half drawing his supposed sprained hand out of the sling.
“Shut up, you fellows,” interposed Raleigh, authoritatively. “Baynes will play in the eleven to-morrow instead of Loman, so there’s an end of the matter.”
Loman was sorely mortified. He had expected his defection would create quite a sensation, and that his class-fellows would be inconsolable at his accident. Instead of that, he had only contrived to quarrel with nearly all of them, alienating their sympathy; and in the end he was to be quietly superseded by Baynes, and the match was to go on as if he had never been heard of at Saint Dominic’s.
“Never mind; I’m bound to go and see Cripps. Besides,” said he to himself, “they’ll miss me to-morrow, whatever they say to-day.”
Next day, just when the great match was beginning, and the entire school was hanging breathless on the issue of every ball, Loman quietly slipped out of Saint Dominic’s, and walked rapidly and nervously down to the Cockchafer in Maltby.
“What shall I say to Cripps?” was the wild question he kept asking himself as he went along; and the answer had not come by the time he found himself standing within that worthy’s respectable premises.
Mr Cripps was in his usual good humour.
“Why, it’s Mr Loman! so it is!” he exclaimed, in a rapture. “Now who would have thought of seeing you here?”
Loman was perplexed.
“Why, you told me to come this afternoon,” said he.