Only the very
self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and scoring off
the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.
It was so in Mike's case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr.
Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have been impressing
upon a noncricketing boy for nearly a month that (_a_) the school is
above all a keen school, (_b_) that all members of it should play
cricket, and (_c_) that by not playing cricket he is ruining his chances
in this world and imperiling them in the next; and when, quite
unexpectedly, you come upon this boy dressed in cricket flannels,
wearing cricket boots and carrying a cricket bag, it seems only natural
to assume that you have converted him, that the seeds of your eloquence
have fallen on fruitful soil and sprouted.
Mr. Downing assumed it.
He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team
when he came upon Mike.
"What!" he cried. "Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the
fray!"
This was Mr. Downing's No. 2 manner--the playful.
"This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm for
a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents
so reduced?"
Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid
grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to
ruffle Mr.
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