ng it without you."

"I don't know that so much. I wish we could play because I'm certain,
with you and Smith, we'd walk into them. They probably aren't sending
down much of a team, and really, now that you and Smith are turning out,
we've got a jolly hot lot. There's quite decent batting all the way
through, and the bowling isn't so bad. If only we could have given this
M.C.C. lot a really good hammering, it might have been easier to get
some good fixtures for next season. You see, it's all right for a school
like Wrykyn, but with a small place like this you simply can't get the
best teams to give you a match till you've done something to show that
you aren't absolute rotters at the game. As for the schools, they're
worse. They'd simply laugh at you. You were cricket secretary at Wrykyn
last year. What would you have done if you'd had a challenge from
Sedleigh? You'd either have laughed till you were sick, or else had a
fit at the mere idea of the thing."

Mike stopped.

"By Jove, you've struck about the brightest scheme on record. I never
thought of it before. Let's get a match on with Wrykyn."

"What! They wouldn't play us."

"Yes, they would. At least, I'm pretty sure they would. I had a letter
from Strachan, the captain, yesterday, saying that the Ripton match had
had to be scratched owing to illness. So they've got a vacant date.
Shall I try them? I'll write to Strachan tonight, if you like. And they
aren't strong this year. We'll smash them. What do you say?"

Adair was as one who has seen a vision.

"By Jove," he said at last, "if we only could!"

28

MR. DOWNING MOVES

The rain continued without a break all the morning. The two teams, after
hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with stump-cricket in
the changing rooms, lunched in the pavilion at one o'clock. After which
the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair, moved that this merry meeting be
considered off and he and his men permitted to catch the next train back
to town. To which Adair, seeing that it was out of the question that
there should be any cricket that afternoon, regretfully agreed, and the
first Sedleigh _v_. M.C.C. match was accordingly scratched.

Mike and Psmith, wandering back to the house, were met by a damp junior
from Downing's, with a message that Mr. Downing wished to see Mike as
soon as he was changed.

"What's he want me for?" inquired Mike.

The messenger did not know. Mr. Downing, it seemed, had not conf