is last time. I was away a lot. But
Mike fairly lived inside the net."

"Well, it's not been chucked away. I suppose he'll get his first next
year. There'll be a big clearing-out of colours at the end of this
term. Nearly all the first are leaving. Henfrey'll be captain, I
expect."

"Saunders, the pro. at home, always says that Mike's going to be the
star cricketer of the family. Better than J. W. even, he thinks. I
asked him what he thought of me, and he said, 'You'll be making a lot
of runs some day, Mr. Bob.' There's a subtle difference, isn't there?
I shall have Mike cutting me out before I leave school if I'm not
careful."

"Sort of infant prodigy," said Trevor. "Don't think he's quite up to
it yet, though."

He went back to his study, and Bob, having finished his oiling and
washed his hands, started on his Thucydides. And, in the stress of
wrestling with the speech of an apparently delirious Athenian general,
whose remarks seemed to contain nothing even remotely resembling sense
and coherence, he allowed the question of Mike's welfare to fade from
his mind like a dissolving view.

CHAPTER VIII

A ROW WITH THE TOWN

The beginning of a big row, one of those rows which turn a school
upside down like a volcanic eruption and provide old boys with
something to talk about, when they meet, for years, is not unlike the
beginning of a thunderstorm.

You are walking along one seemingly fine day, when suddenly there is a
hush, and there falls on you from space one big drop. The next moment
the thing has begun, and you are standing in a shower-bath. It is just
the same with a row. Some trivial episode occurs, and in an instant
the place is in a ferment. It was so with the great picnic at Wrykyn.

The bare outlines of the beginning of this affair are included in a
letter which Mike wrote to his father on the Sunday following the Old
Wrykynian matches.

This was the letter:

"DEAR FATHER,--Thanks awfully for your letter. I hope you are quite
well. I have been getting on all right at cricket lately. My scores
since I wrote last have been 0 in a scratch game (the sun got in my
eyes just as I played, and I got bowled); 15 for the third against an
eleven of masters (without G. B. Jones, the Surrey man, and Spence);
28 not out in the Under Sixteen game; and 30 in a form match. Rather
decent. Yesterday one of the men put down for the second against the
O.W.'s second couldn't play because