The consequence was that his form always played hard. This
made other forms play hard. And the net result was that, when Adair
succeeded to the captaincy of Rugger and cricket in the same year,
Sedleigh, as Mr. Downing, Adair's housemaster and the nearest approach
to a cricket master that Sedleigh possessed, had a fondness for saying,
was a keen school. As a whole, it both worked and played with energy.
All it wanted now was opportunity.
This Adair was determined to give it. He had that passionate fondness
for his school which every boy is popularly supposed to have, but which
really is implanted in about one in every thousand. The average
public-school boy _likes_ his school. He hopes it will lick Bedford at
Rugger and Malvern at cricket, but he rather bets it won't. He is sorry
to leave, and he likes going back at the end of the holidays, but as for
any passionate, deep-seated love of the place, he would think it rather
bad form than otherwise. If anybody came up to him, slapped him on the
back, and cried, "Come along, Jenkins, my boy! Play up for the old
school, Jenkins! The dear old school! The old place you love so!" he
would feel seriously ill.
Adair was the exception.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66