ling to think how
I should play. I could see myself marching slowly along the Woodstock
road with the Warden, and however badly I played did not seem to matter
much, for there was something far more awful to come. The XV. began to
press at once, and I, as full-back, had plenty to do. What I did was
reckless; I simply did not care what happened, and everything I tried
seemed to come off. Everybody who plays games has an occasional day
when things get twisted round, and it is easier to do right than wrong.
Those are the days for which we live in hope, and one of mine came on
that Tuesday. I knew the whole thing was a fluke, and I told Murray
and Foster so after the game, but they both said that I had given Sykes
of Merton, who was playing back for the XV., something to think about.

During the next day, visions of my blue floated before me, and the
prospect of walking with the Warden lost its terrors, until I went
round to see Fred on Thursday morning. I wanted him to give me some
hints, but I am sorry so say he saw only the humorous side of my
engagement, and was very exasperating when he might have been extremely
useful.

CHAPTER IX

A SURPRISE

When I left my rooms to walk with the Warden, I imagined that every one
I met was laughing at me, and being intensely on the alert for insults,
I was very displeased with the butler when he came to the door, and
surveyed me. "What can you want with the Warden?" was written plainly
over his face. I have never met a man who could be more gravely
condescending than the Warden's butler, and I know several first-class
cricketers, two headmasters, a popular novelist, and a rising
politician aged twenty-four. I should have enjoyed telling that man
what I thought of him, but a doorstep is a poor place for an
altercation, unless it is with a cabman, and I saw the Warden advancing
upon me clad in a cloak, and carrying a most useful umbrella, which
must have been rolled up by himself.

The appearance of the Warden might have surprised any one, but it could
have impressed nobody. You had to know that he was a Warden, and wrote
books about religion and philosophy, before you could feel afraid of
him. If he was a precisian in the choice of words, he certainly was
not one in the matter of dress.

"I think," he said, with just a glance at me to see if I was the right
man, "that we will enter the Parks by the gates opposite to Keble
College; we shall be more or less inte