Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/241

 it was the only one of the two fit to sit in. Jan had not grown less indifferent to his immediate surroundings; he had still no soul for plush or Oxford frames; not only had the grease-spots multiplied on the green table-cloth foisted upon him by Shockley, but the papers on the floor were transparent with blots of oil from his bat. Carpenter, on the contrary, had made a miniature museum of his tiny den, and his lucubrations were promoted by the wise glass eyes of a moulting owl, purchased as a relic at Charles Cave's auction.

"I hope you're keeping the scores of all your matches," said he one night. "You ought to stick 'em in a book; if you won't I'll do it for you."

"What's the good?" inquired Jan, with the genial indolence of an athlete on his day off.

"Good? Well, for one thing, it'll be jolly interesting for your kids some day."

Chips had not smiled, but Jan grinned from ear to ear.

"Steady on! It's like you to look a hundred years ahead."

"Well, but surely your people would take an interest in them?"

"My people!"

Chips knew it was a sore subject. He knew more about it than he ever intended to betray; but he had committed his blunder, and it would have made bad worse to try to retrieve it by a suspicious silence or an incontinent change of topic. Besides, a part of his knowledge came from Jan's own deliverances on the sort of time he had in Norfolk.

"But surely they're jolly proud of your being in the Eleven?"

"My uncle might be. But he's in India."