Then suddenly he noticed a remarkable phenomenon. The other wing three-quarter was Rand-Brown. If Rand-Brown was playing for the second, who was playing for the first?
He looked at the list.
“Come on,” he said hastily to M’Todd. He wanted to get away somewhere where his agitated condition would not be noticed. He felt quite faint at the shock of seeing his name on the list of the first fifteen. There it was, however, as large as life. “M. Barry.” Separated from the rest by a thin red line, but still there. In his most optimistic moments he had never dreamed of this. M’Todd was reading slowly through the list of the second. He did everything slowly, except eating.
“Come on,” said Barry again.
M’Todd had, after much deliberation, arrived at a profound truth. He turned to Barry, and imparted his discovery to him in the weighty manner of one who realises the importance of his words.
“Look here,” he said, “your name’s not down here.”
“I know. Come on.”
“But that means you’re not playing for the second.”
“Of course it does. Well, if you aren’t coming, I’m off.”
“But, look here——”
Barry disappeared through the door. After a moment’s pause, M’Todd followed him. He came up with him on the senior gravel.
“What’s up?” he inquired.
“Nothing,” said Barry.
“Are you sick about not playing for the second?”
“No.”
“You are, really. Come and have a bun.”
In the philosophy of M’Todd it was indeed a deep-rooted sorrow that could not be cured by the internal application of a new, hot bun. It had never failed in his own case.
“Bun!” Barry was quite shocked at the suggestion. “I can’t afford to get myself out of condition with beastly buns.”
“But if you aren’t playing——”
“You ass. I’m playing for the first. Now, do you see?”
M’Todd gaped. His mind never worked very rapidly. “What about Rand-Brown, then?” he said.
“Rand-Brown’s been chucked out. Can’t you understand? You are an idiot. Rand-Brown’s playing for the second, and I’m playing for the first.”
“But you’re——”
He stopped. He had been going to point out that Barry’s tender years—he was only sixteen—and smallness would make it impossible for him to play with success for the first fifteen. He refrained owing to a conviction that the remark would not be wholly judicious. Barry was touchy on the subject of his size, and M’Todd had suffered before now for commenting on it in a disparaging spirit.
“I tell you what we’ll do after school,” said Barry, “we’ll have some running and passing. It’ll do you a lot of good, and I want to practise taking passes at full speed. You can trot along at your ordinary pace, and I’ll sprint up from behind.”
M’Todd saw no objection to that. Trotting along at his ordinary pace—five miles an hour—would just suit him.
“Then after that,” continued Barry, with a look of enthusiasm, “I want to practise passing back to my centre. Paget used to do it awfully well last term, and I know Trevor expects his wing to. So I’ll buck along, and you race up to take my pass. See?”
This was not in M’Todd’s line at all. He proposed a slight alteration in the scheme.
“Hadn’t you better get somebody else—?” he began.
“Don’t be a slack beast,” said Barry. “You want exercise awfully badly.”
And, as M’Todd always did exactly as Barry wished, he gave in, and spent from four-thirty to five that afternoon in the prescribed manner. A suggestion on his part at five sharp that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go and have some tea was not favourably received by the enthusiastic three-quarter, who proposed to devote what time remained before lock-up to practising drop-kicking. It was a painful alternative that faced M’Todd. His allegiance to Barry demanded that he should consent to the scheme. On the other hand, his allegiance to afternoon tea—equally strong—called him back to the house, where there was cake, and also muffins. In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour’s, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking. So M’Todd was dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little serious and scientific work.