Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/248

 accounted hard lines. But in the second innings it was a complex moment for Jan when Evan strutted in with all the air of a saviour of situations. Jan did not want him to fail again, and yet he did because Evan's people were looking on! He felt mean and yet exalted as he led off with a trimmer, and the leg-bail hit Stratten in the face.

Then Jan showed want of tact.

"I'm awfully sorry!" he stammered out, but Evan passed him in a flame, without look or sign of having heard.

Mr. Devereux, however, could afford to treat the whole affair differently. And he did.

He was a fine-looking man of the florid type, with a light grey bowler, a flower in his coat, and a boisterous self-confidence which made him almost too conspicuous on the unequal field. Mr. Devereux was far from grudging Jan his great success; on the contrary, he seemed only too inclined to transfer his paternal pride to his old coachman's son, and in reality was sorely tempted to boast of him in that relationship. Some saving sense of fitness, abetted by an early hint (but nothing more) from Heriot, sealed his itching lips; but in talking to the lad himself, Mr. Devereux naturally saw no necessity for restraint.

"I remember when you used to bowl to my son in front of your father's—ah—in front of those cottages of mine—with a solid india-rubber ball! We never thought of all this then, did we? But I congratulate you, my lad, and very glad I am to have the opportunity."

"Thank you very much, sir," said Jan, in a grateful glow from head to heel.

"I'll tell them all about you down there; and some day you must come and stay with us, as a guest, you know, and play a match or two for Evan and his friends at