“I should choose kissing her,” he said, “because Frank could tell me all about the match afterwards, and besides, it would all be reported in the _Sportsman_, and I could read about it. But I couldn’t read about my kissing her in the paper; at least, I don’t know in which. Oh Lord, but fancy missing seeing Frank putting perfectly straight balls away to the leg boundary in the ’Varsity match, and then scratching his ear, as he always does when he hits a boundary, as if wondering what on earth has happened to the ball. I don’t know which I should choose. I Don’t Know.”
David looked mournfully round for inspiration and lay down again.
“After all, I wonder whether it’s worth while doing anything or getting anything,” he said with a sudden lugubrious accent. “I tried to think it would be a damned fine—jolly fine thing to get into the sixth, and yet before a month was out we both got absolutely accustomed to it. It’s been just the same about getting into school-eleven—oh, well, not quite, because I do enjoy that most awfully still. But I dare say it won’t last. Why, a year ago, if I had been told that I might have any two things I wanted, I should have chosen to get into the sixth and the eleven. It didn’t seem that there was anything more to want.”
“I should have thought you would have chosen that Maddox shouldn’t leave,” remarked Bags.
“No use wishing that: he had to. Besides, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be in the Cambridge eleven now. And you can’t choose anything that clips your pal’s wings. ’Tisn’t my expression; Adams said it the other day when he was talking to me about Jev.”
“Didn’t know Jevons had any wings,” said Bags.
“Nor did I. But Adams seems to think so. I say, Adams is rather a wise sort of man, and he sees just about three times as much as I thought. Oh, and he told me Hughes had passed into Sandhurst. He must have become a decent chap again.”
“Jolly glad! About Adams: I always imagined that as long as he wasn’t bothered, he didn’t mind much what happened, short of a public row. But I believe his funny old eye is on us more than we think.”
“And much more than it used to be!” said Bags. “You know the bizz about the Court of Appeal woke him up tremendous. There was a regular Insti- and Consti-tution going on in the house under his very nose, and he had never suspected it. Up till then he didn’t bother about what any one did as long as there wasn’t a row. You know, David, the house was a perfect hell about the time you and I came here, and Adams hadn’t a notion of it.”