Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/242

 "And I suppose the old people don't know what it means?"

"They might. I haven't told them, if you want to know."

Chips looked as though he could hardly believe his ears. Comment was impossible now; he shifted his ground to the sporting personal interest of such records as he would have treasured in Jan's place.

"You'll bowl for the Gentlemen before you've done," said Chips, "and then you'll be sorry you haven't got the first chapter in black and white. You should see the book A. G. Swallow keeps! I saw it once, when he came to stay at my private school. He's even got his Leave to be in the Eleven, signed by Jerry; but upon my Sam if I were you I'd have that in a frame!"

It was a characteristic enactment that nobody could obtain his Eleven or Fifteen colours without a permit signed and countersigned by house-master and form-master, and finally endorsed by Mr. Thrale himself, whose autograph was seldom added without a cordial word of congratulation.

"I believe I have got that," said Jan, "somewhere or other."

And Chips eventually discovered it among the Greek and Latin litter on the floor.

"What a chap you are!" he cried. "I'm going to keep this for you until one or other of us leaves, Tiger. You're—I won't say you're not fit to be in the Eleven—nobody was ever more so—but I'm blowed if you deserve to own a precious document like this!"

Yet there was another missive, and souvenir of his success, which Jan had already under lock and key, except when he took it out to read once more. Chips never saw or heard of this one; but he would have recognised the