There is a queer elasticity about boys which no one, least of all themselves, can account for. A quarter of an hour after the big practice had begun Stephen had forgotten all about his examination, and could think of nothing but cricket.
As he sat cross-legged on the grass among half a dozen youngsters like himself, he even began to forget that he was a new boy, and was surprised to find himself holding familiar converse with one and another of his companions.
“Well bowled, sir!” shouted Master Paul, as a very swift ball from Ricketts took Bullinger’s middle stump clean out of the ground—“rattling well bowled! I say,” he added, turning round; “if Ricketts bowls like that to-day week, the others will be nowhere.”
“Oh,” said Stephen, to whom this remark seemed to be addressed.
Master Paul looked sharply round.
“Hullo, young ’un, is that you? Jolly good play, isn’t it? Who are you for, A or Z?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mean? Do you back the A’s or the Z’s? that’s what I mean. Oh, I suppose you don’t twig, though. A to M, you know, against N to Z.”
“Oh,” said Stephen, “I back the A to M’s, of course; my brother is in that half.”
“So he is—isn’t that him going in now? Yes; you see if Ricketts doesn’t get him out in the first over!”