“Bit done, aren’t you?” she said. He was working for her at the present moment, so must be cared for, just as he had had to have glasses of new milk during the election. “Afraid you’ve had a thin time with Davids. I can’t think why the clubs don’t combine and refuse to play against him. He’s quite a decent little chap, though, off the field. Doesn’t take the thing seriously enough--that’s what’s wrong. I thought that stick of mine wouldn’t be any good to you--you want something beefy for Davids. Perhaps you’d like to have Lanty’s back again? Saunders brought you down a nasty whack; must have hurt you somewhere. He’s a clumsy ass. Only last week, he got his stick fast in a girl’s hair, and pulled some of it out by the roots. Look here, hadn’t you better knock off altogether? We’ll get along somehow. Saunders hasn’t begun to stretch himself yet, and I can do a bit more, too. I’m resigned to lose, anyhow. Stubbs will just simply give the whole blooming game away if Saunders hits him again. I wish Lanty had been here! There’ll be no saving us in any case if Teddy Dunn” (the centre-forward) “loses his wool after half-time, as he always does. His nerves aren’t guaranteed to wear the whole seventy minutes. Well, ease up for a while, won’t you? Hang about on the touch-line if you don’t care to go up to the house, and if you feel like chipping in again later, well, chip!” She brought him his coat, and snatched the camp-stool from a bleating Helwise, and a kind little kid-gloved lady, who had been calling somewhere, produced some smelling-salts from a russia-leather bag. He sat on the camp-stool with his head in his hands, bitterly ashamed but helpless, and wishing with all his heart that Saunders had finished him off completely. He had not meant any of it to be in the least like this. He had hugged a vision of fleeting, soaring ecstasy, and--with God be the rest!--but it seemed that things didn’t happen like that. This was shrieking farce and despicable exhibition--no saving grace about it anywhere. But he would not go up to the house, though his face burned every time anybody looked at him. He was an object of utter derision, and, worse--pity, but he would not go up to the house, though his whole soul turned to it with longing. He must stop until the last chance of glory was past; so he clung to his stick, refusing to give it up, and sniffed bravely at the smelling-salts, hoping and praying that he might feel able to “chip in again, later.”