Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/90

72 as an excuse, the prosecutor who had his inner ear scathingly replied, “Yes, and why could n’t  you sleep? It was because you were scared before the game. You lay down before ever it began. You’re a quitter; that’s all you are. Excusing yourself because you were tired!”

With this morbid idea implanted in his mind, Edward was for some days quite morose. In his letter about the game to his mother he did not go into details; he said that he himself played very badly and that was why St. Timothy’s lost, but that Charles had played very well, and it was rather a pity that she  and his father could n’t have been there to see  Charles play; they would n’t have got much  satisfaction out of watching him.

The tone of the letter was so disconsolate that his mother answered it at once; she said  Charles’s account did not coincide with his at  all, for Charles had written that Edward had  done splendidly, except that he had got rather  tired towards the end—which was only natural  in one so young; Mrs. Crashaw ended her