He woke gasping and clutching at things, and if Helwise (in Lanty’s ’scutem) had been anybody but Helwise, she would have rung all the bells and ordered doctors and hot bottles and brandy, but instead she asked him to button her gloves, and thought him tiresomely stupid and fumbling as she tried to see exactly how sporting she looked in the sideboard mirror. He felt better again, however, as they jogged along to the ground, and began to experience joyful thrills as strenuous figures with bare knees and flapping overcoats push-biked past them, armed with sticks. He drew his own from under the rug so that the push-bikers could see it. It was a Bulger, as he had anticipated, slightly elegantised by wear and tear, but a Bulger for all that. Still, it might possibly bring off the twist all right, if he hurried it a bit. The field under the farm was already dotted by the red shirts of the opposing team, and a sprinkling of spectators edged the neat touch-lines. The white-topped Bluecastrians were grouped beside the little pigeon-house of a pavilion (where at least two people who liked each other might have found room to shelter) listening to Harriet’s barked directions. When the trap drove up, she looked at a very strong watch on her wrist so emphatically that Helwise tried to leap the wheel, and tore Lanty’s ’scutem on the lamp-bracket. The home team stared curiously at Wiggie as he came in, carrying a few mufflers and a camp-stool belonging to Helwise, for half of them had heard him sing, the day before, and the half that hadn’t wished it had, while both halves had just been told by Harriet that of course he wouldn’t be the slightest use in the game, so that they must all back him as much as they could. Certainly, he did not give an impression of superfluous strength; indeed, when he had taken off his coat, he looked as fragile and hopeless an athlete as you could possibly expect to see, so much so that the brawny captain-back of the opposing side came up and implored Harriet to “put it somewhere where I can’t hit it!” Wiggie didn’t hear him, but he wouldn’t have cared if he had. The soft, bright air was wine in his blood. The press of the spring turf lent him a buoyancy not his own. The strength of union, of interdependence and support, put fire into his slack muscles. He stole the ball from the red shirts when it shot out suddenly from the circle, and was trying to persuade the Bulger that he had always belonged to it, when Harriet stalked up. She looked very trim and hard and clean and extremely well put together. You could picture her lasting through half-a-dozen matches without losing so much as a hairpin.