nging.

"It's curious, at any rate," said Mansfield, "that Pledge's fag should
begin to go to the dogs, while his chum, who fags for Cresswell, and is
quite as racketty, should keep all right."

"Do you call young Richardson all right?" asked Ponty. "I should say he
and his friend are in the same boat, and he's holding the tiller."

Which was pretty 'cute for a lazy one like Ponty.

"Well," said Mansfield, who, with all his earnestness, felt really
baffled over the problem, "things mustn't go on as they are, surely."

"Certainly not, dear boy, if we can make them better; but I don't see
what's to be done. I'd bless you if you could put things right."

And he put his feet upon the chair in front, and took up his novel.

Mansfield took the hint. Nor did he misunderstand his indolent friend.
Ponty's indolence wasn't all laziness. It was sometimes a cloak for
perplexity; and the captain-to-be, as he said good-night, guessed
shrewdly that not many pages of the novel would be skimmed that evening.

Ponty did, in fact, wake up a bit those last few weeks of the term. He
rambled down once or twice to the Juniors' tennis court, and terrified
the small fry there by sprawling at full length on the grass within
sight of the play. It was a crowded corner of the fields and a noisy
one, and, if the captain went there for a nap, he had queer notions of a
snug berth. If, however, he went there to see life, he knew what he was
about.

He saw Aspinall there, toughening every day, and working up his screwy
service patiently and doggedly, till one or two of the knowing ones
found it worth their while to get on the other side of the net and play
against him. Culver was there, big of bone, bragging, blustering as
ever, but keeping the colour in his cheeks with healthy sport. Gosse
was there, forgetting to make himself a nuisance for one hour in twenty-
four. The globular Cazenove was there, melting with the heat, but
proclaiming that even a big body and short legs can do some good by help
of a true eye and a patient spirit. These and twenty others were there,
getting good every one of them, and atoning, every time they scored a
point and hit out a rally, for something less healthy or less profitable
scored elsewhere. And Ponty, as he lay there blinking in the sun,
moralised on the matter, and came to the conclusion that there is hope
for a boy as long as he loves to don his flannels and roll up his shirt-
sleeves, and stan