crum and lurk about
for the ball. They were pushing us and it was a mere fluke that they
kicked too hard. Anyhow the half could have scored: it was only a
matter of going two or three yards. You ought to have been in the
middle, shoving like hell. See?"

"Yes."

"Well, don't lurk any more, or there'll be trouble. It isn't a
forward's business to score tries. Anyone can be a 'winger': it takes
a man to shove."

Moore was one of the old school of forwards. He believed in foot-work
and read _The Morning Post_.

"So don't let me catch you loafing outside the scrum again," he
concluded. "There's quite enough chaps doing that already." And he
strolled away.

Moore was not a person of much imagination and he never saw that he was
not going the right way to make a great forward. A word of
encouragement coming on the top of this, possibly injudicious, success
would have made Martin play like a devil. Instead he deliberately
slacked for a week.

Indeed footer, in spite of its moments, became monotonous. Martin had
to play four and often five times a week in all weathers, and very
often the sides were uneven and the game, consequently, a farce, a
shivery, cheerless farce in which everyone longed for the pleasant
signal for release. By the end of term nobody liked the games and
everybody was as sick of the fields as of the classrooms. If was not
merely that the games were too frequent, but that they were scarcely
ever treated as games. As the end of the term approached, bringing
with it challenge cup matches for old and young, house feeling ran
strong and the various teams were goaded by their prefects with
relentless severity. Sometimes whole fifteens would be swiped in turn
for their failure to win matches, quite irrespective of their capacity
to do so: slackness could always be alleged. At Berney's, it was true,
no great rigour was displayed. Had Spots been captain more blood might
have been shed, but Moore, who directed the house teams, was more
lenient and rarely went further than guttural abuse and threats.
Being, however, himself a forward, he instituted scrumming practice in
the evenings, and Martin found himself being pushed about the house
gymnasium at great pain to his ears and limbs, while larger boys
planted shrewd and stinging blows on the prominent portions of the
losing side: it was no fun being in the back row. As he shoved and
groaned in the perspiring mass, there flamed across his mind