Night fell, the referee blew his whistle, the match was at an end, and still not a goal had been scored. Utterly weary, covered with mud from head to heel, the twenty-two players trooped back to the dressing-room. They flung off the reeking garments of battle and fought for the icy shower bath, the heroic Ginger still the foremost in the fray.
"Look slippy into yer duds, young feller," he breathed hoarsely in the ear of the Sailor. "We've pleadin' well got to catch that kermittee afore it goes."
Ginger might have spared himself all anxiety in regard to the "kermittee." The Great General Staff had made up its mind in the matter already. The directors would like to see Harper in the committee room before he went.
"It's Harper they want to see," said their emissary. "They don't want to see no one else."
"Oh, don't they!" was Ginger's eloquent comment to himself.
"Ready, Harper?" said the emissary, with the air of a law-giver. "I'll show you the way."
"Come on, Sailor boy," said Ginger, with his affectionate avuncular air, as he gave a final touch, aided by a hairbrush and a looking-glass, to his auburn locks which he wore in the form of a fringe on his forehead.
"Jukes, there's your expenses," said the emissary rather haughtily, as he handed Ginger a sovereign. "The directors don't require to see you."
"I'd like to see them," said the imperturbable Ginger.
"So's mine," said Ginger. "Come on, Sailor boy."
The chairman, now enthroned in the committee room, had short shrift for Ginger.
"Jukes," he said with brutal directness, as he chewed the end of his cigar, "we didn't send for you. You are not the Rovers' sort and never will be. You are a trier an' all that, you are a good plucked un, but the Rovers is only out for one thing, an' that's class."
This oration was extremely well delivered, cigar in mouth, yet the committee seemed to be more impressed by it than Ginger himself.
"That's right, Gus," said Mr. Satellite Albert. "Those are our views."
Mr. Augustus Higginbottom might have expressed the views of the committee, but it did not appear that they were the views of Mr. W. H. Jukes. That warrior stood, tweed cap in hand, the Sailor by his side, as though they did not in any way concern him.