d before. I'm afraid
Muriel will put you into a dreadfully low team. Never mind, though,
you must work as hard at it as ever you can, and you'll soon get moved
up."

"But--but shall I _have_ to play?" asked Geraldine in some dismay.

"Of course you will. Unless you've got a doctor's certificate to say
you're not allowed. Everybody has to play here, unless the doctor says
you mayn't. Never mind, you'll soon get to like it. Nobody could help
liking hockey when once they've begun--it's such a ripping game!"

"Doesn't the ball hurt frightfully when it hits you?" said Geraldine
nervously. She had watched hockey matches, although she had never
played in one, and she did not feel at all inclined to participate in
the game.

"Of course it does!" Jack laughed merrily. "But that's part of the
fun. You feel my leg--all those little bumps and lumpy things down the
front. That's from the balls I stopped last year"--with a proud
inflection in her tone. "I'm third eleven now, B.1--they call the
teams after the letters of the alphabet here--and with any luck I'll
get into the second eleven this term. There are two vacancies--left
outside and right half. I've no chance as outer, I'm not fast enough.
Besides, Vera Maynce from the Fifth Remove is almost sure to get chosen
for that. But I've got quite a sporting chance for right half. Gertie
Page from the Upper Fifth might get it, but if I only do well in the
trial next Saturday, I believe Muriel will give it to me. She told me
at the end of last season that it would lie between Gertie and me, and
I'd better not let myself get stale. And I haven't. My brother's been
practising sending hard shots at me all through the hols. I'm getting
no end of a dab at stopping them. You have to be good at stopping
balls, if you play half-back," she added, for the information of the
new girl.

"What happens after hockey?" asked Geraldine. She had been listening
rather uneasily to Jack's account of the glories of the hockey field.
To Geraldine's mind these would be more in the nature of tortures.
Even before the air-raid she had always been rather a delicate child,
and had never played any of the rough and tomboyish games in which most
girls join as readily as their brothers. Consequently, she had never
learnt to take hard knocks with the average schoolgirl's ready
equanimity. And the idea of stopping balls on her shins amidst the mud
and scrimmage of the hockey field rather ap