the
School-house match. Our house plays the whole of the School at
foot-ball.[30] And we all wear white trousers to show 'em we don't
care for hacks.[31] You're in luck to come to-day. You just will see a
match; and Brooke's going to let me play in quarters. That's more than
he'll do for any other lower-school boy, except James, and he is
fourteen."

[30] #Foot-ball#: foot-ball is the great game at Rugby. It
first became popular in America under the Rugby rules, which,
though modified, are still the basis of the game as now
played.

[31] #Hacks#: kicks on the shins.

"Who is Brooke?"

"Why, that big fellow who called over at dinner, to be sure. He's cock
of the school, and head of the School-house side, and the best kick
and charger in Rugby."

"Oh, but do show me where they play. And tell me about it. I love
foot-ball so, and have played all my life. Won't Brooke let me play?"

"Not he," said East, with some indignation; "why, you don't know the
rules,--you'll be a month learning them. And then it's no joke
playing-up, in a match, I can tell you. Quite another thing from your
private school games. Why, there's been two collar-bones broken this
half, and a dozen fellows lamed. And last year a fellow had his leg
broken."

Tom listened with the profoundest respect to this chapter of
accidents, and followed East across the level ground till they came to
a sort of gigantic gallows of two poles eighteen feet high, fixed
upright in the ground some fourteen feet apart, with a cross-bar
running from one to the other at the height of ten feet or
thereabouts.

EAST DISCOURSETH ON FOOT-BALL.

"This is one of the goals," said East, "and you see the other across
there, right opposite, under the Doctor's wall. Well, the match is for
the best of three goals; whichever side kicks two goals wins: and it
won't do, you see, just to kick the ball through these posts, it must
go over the cross-bar; any height'll do, so long as it's between the
posts. You'll have to stay in goal to touch the ball when it rolls
behind the posts, because if the other side touch it they have a try
at goal. Then we fellows in quarters, we play just about in front of
goal here, and have to turn the ball and kick it back before the big
fellows on the other side can follow it up. And in front of us all the
big fellows play, and that's where the scrummages are mostly."

Tom's respect increased as he struggled to make out his fri