quite a good game," Rendell apologised.

"It may be all right for internationals who dart about and toss the
ball in the air and catch it on the end of their sticks, but it's no
game for incapables like you."

"I'm in the team anyhow. And you, by the way, are winning renown as
the worst wing three-quarter in Oxford."

"That is probably true," Martin admitted. "But it doesn't destroy my
contention that hockey is a scrappy, uncomfortable business and only
good enough for men who can't get into any other teams."

"You're a stark old reactionary," retorted Rendell. "Hockey is the
game of the future. There'll be a 'full Blue' for it in a year or two.
And don't make the obvious remark."

Martin didn't. But he continued to jeer when Rendell went off in the
rain and came back with bruised shins and perhaps a black eye. This
only encouraged Rendell to take the game very seriously, to turn out
always, and to run like a hare down his wing, whereas Martin and
Lawrence treated this rugger team with disdain and only played when it
pleased them. The secretary, being hard up for players, could not drop
them altogether, for even Martin was better than his substitute. In
the summer Rendell played cricket as seriously as he had played his
hockey, so that he just gained a place in the college eleven. Martin
played sometimes for the tennis six and the other three fled, when it
was warm enough and at first when it was not--for such is the way of
freshers--to navigate the Cherwell in the communal punt.

In the evenings they dined out as often as their college would let them
and went to meetings of clubs or, on the rare occasions when there was
a play worth seeing, to the theatre. Work they neglected, thoroughly
and with a good heart. Chard and Davenant, who were to take modern
history, both failed in Pass Mods in March, but passed in the summer
after a fortnight's reading. The other three had resolved that Honour
Mods could easily be squared in a long vac and two terms: they did not
realise that a year of idleness (or nearly two years, for none of them
had worked since gaining their scholarships) creates a habit of mind
which cannot easily be shaken off. Two stiff terms are easier to
contemplate than to achieve. Martin, indeed, had his uncle's blessing,
for John Berrisford had told him that the first year was meant to
broaden one's point of view: it struck him as a joyous process, this
broadening of one's point of view.