Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 31).djvu/220

 Bob was evidently still wrapped in gloomy despair when he joined us. He was so silent in the motor that father thought he must be dreadfully nervous about the match, and tried to cheer him up, which made him worse. We arrived at the ground at last, and Bob went to the pavilion to change.

We sat just behind two young men whose whole appearance literally shrieked the word "Fresher"! When I thought that Bob had been just like that a year before and that he was really quite different now, I felt so proud of my efforts to improve him that I was quite consoled for the moment. I was in a gentle reverie when father nudged me, and I woke up to find that the two young men were discussing Bob. "Yes, that's all very well," one of them was saying, the one in the brighter brown suit, "but my point is that he's too selfish. He doesn't feed his forwards enough."

I wondered whether this young man had been reading the sporting paper.

"He's pretty nippy, though," said the other.

"Personally, if I had been skipper," said the bright brown one, "I should have played Welby-Smith. Why they ever chucked him licks me."

"Well, I don't know," the other was beginning, when his words were drowned in a burst of applause, as the Cambridge team came on to the field. There was another shout a moment later, and Oxford appeared, Bob looking like a dog that's just going to be washed.

"Good," said the bright young man; "we've won the toss. The Tabs'll have to play with the sun in their eyes second half. Just when it's setting, too."

I was glad to hear this, because I know what a nuisance the sun in one's eyes is at cricket, and I suppose it must be just as bad at football.

There was a lot of running about and kicking at first. A little Cambridge man with light hair got the ball after a bit, and simply tore down the touch-line till he came to Bob, and Bob got in his way, and he kicked it to another man, only before he'd got it the other man who had been standing nearest to Bob at the beginning of the game took it away from him and sent it a long way up the field.

"Well played, Bob!" said father. "That little man with the light hair is Stevens, the international. He's the most dangerous man Cambridge have got. Bob will have his work cut out to stop him. Still, he did it that time all right."

The ball was being kicked about quite near the Cambridge goal now, so I thought Oxford must be getting the best of it. The little man was standing about by himself looking on, as if he were too important a person to mix himself up with the others. But suddenly one of the other Cambridge men sent the ball in his direction and he was off with it like a flash, and there seemed to be nobody there to stop him except Bob, who was jumping about half-way down the field.

All the Cambridge men raced down in the direction of the Oxford goal, and Bob met the little man as he had done before and made him pass to the other man. Then Bob rushed for this man, though there was another Oxford player rushing for him too, and the Cambridge man with the ball waited till they were both quite near him and then kicked it back to the international.

"Oh, Romney, you rotter!" said one of the young men in front of me, in a voice of agony; and then there was a perfect howl of joy from half the crowd, for the international, who hadn't anyone between him and the goal but the goalkeeper, who looked nervous, ran round and shot the ball through into the net. "Well, there's one of their goals," said the not quite so bright young man. "Chap writing in the Chronicle this morning said Oxford would be lucky if they only had three scored against them. What a rotter Romney was to leave Stevens like that! Why on earth can't he stick to his man?"

Father looked quite grey and haggard.

"If Bob's going to play the fool like that," he said, "he'd better have stayed at home."

"What didn't he do?" I asked.

"He didn't stick to his man. He gets up against an international forward, and the first thing he does is to leave him with a clear field. He must stick to Stevens."

The whole air seemed full of Bob's wrong doing. I suppose it was a sort of wireless telegraphy or something that made me do it. At any rate, I jumped up and shrieked in front of everybody, in a dead silence, too: "You must stick to Stevens, Bob!"

Then there was a roar of laughter. I suppose it must have sounded funny, though I didn't mean it; and everybody who wanted Oxford to win took up the cry. Only after shouting, "You must stick to Stevens, Bob!" once, they began to shout, "Buck up, Oxford!"

Bob turned scarlet—I was looking at him through father's field-glasses—and I believe he was swearing to himself. Then the game began again.