"You played jolly well," he told his despondent team, as they trooped off the field. "We haven't got together yet, that's all. And it was a hot side we were playing today. They would have licked Blackburn's." A good deal more in the same strain gave the house team the comfortable feeling that they had done uncommonly well to get beaten by only twenty-four points. Kennedy fostered the delusion, and in the meantime arranged with Mr Dencroft to collect fifteen innocents and lead them forth to be slaughtered by the house on the following Friday. Mr Dencroft entered into the thing with a relish. When he showed Kennedy the list of his team on the Friday morning, that diplomatist chuckled. He foresaw a good time in the near future. "You must play up like the dickens," he told the house during the dinner-hour. "Dencroft is bringing a hot lot this afternoon. But I think we shall lick them." They did. When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the result down to a fluke. Then they beat another side by a try to nothing; and by that time they had got going as an organised team, and their heart was in the thing. They had improved out of all knowledge when the house-matches began. Blair's was the lucky house that drew against them in the first round. "Good business," said the men of Blair. "Wonder who we'll play in the second round." They left the field marvelling. For some unaccountable reason, Dencroft's had flatly refused to act in the good old way as a doormat for their opponents. Instead, they had played with a dash and knowledge of the game which for the first quarter of an hour quite unnerved Blair's. In that quarter of an hour they scored three times, and finished the game with two goals and three tries to their name. The School looked on it as a huge joke. "Heard the latest?" friends would say on meeting one another the day after the game. "Kay's--I mean Dencroft's--have won a match. They simply sat on Blair's. First time they've ever won a house-match, I should think. Blair's are awfully sick. We shall have to be looking out." Whereat the friend would grin broadly. The idea of Dencroft's making a game of it with his house tickled him. When Dencroft's took fifteen points off Mulholland's, the joke began to lose its humour. "Why, they must be some good," said the public, startled at the novelty of the idea. "If they win another match, they'll be in the final!"