"I didn't say anything of the kind. I said I wasn't going to play here. There's a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn team before I came here. Three years." Adair was silent for a moment. "Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans tomorrow?" he said at length. Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up. "No, thanks." There was a silence. "Above it, I suppose?" "Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end net of yours before I'm fit to play for Sedleigh." There was another pause. "Then you won't play?" asked Adair. "I'm not keeping you, am I?" said Mike, politely. It was remarkable what a number of members of Outwood's house appeared to cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been that master's somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat his own house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the most unpopular is he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convicted of favoritism. And the dislike deepens if it is a house which he favors and not merely individuals. On occasions when boys in his own house and boys from other houses were accomplices and partners in wrongdoing, Mr. Downing distributed his thunderbolts unequally, and the school noticed it. The result was that not only he himself, but also--which was rather unfair--his house, too, had acquired a good deal of unpopularity. The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheon interval was that having got Downing's up a tree, they would be fools not to make the most of the situation. Barnes's remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wickets began to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaring somewhere about half past three or four, was met with a storm of opposition. "Declare!" said Robinson. "Great Scot, what on earth are you talking about?" "Declare!" Stone's voice was almost a wail of indignation. "I never saw such a chump." "They'll be rather sick if we don't, won't they?" suggested Barnes. "Sick! I should think they would," said Stone. "That's just the gay idea. Can't you see that by a miracle we've got a chance of getting a jolly good bit of our own back against those Downing's ticks? What we've got to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if we can, and be jolly glad it's so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozen pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson's drives, perhaps they'll stick on less side about things in general in future. Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing's, if I can get it." "So do I," said Robinson. "If you declare, I swear I won't field. Nor will Robinson." "Rather not." "Well, I won't then," said Barnes unhappily. "Only you know they're rather sick already." "Don't you worry about that," said Stone with a wide grin. "They'll be a lot sicker before we've finished."