School Stories by P. G. Wodehouse (children's ebooks free online .TXT) 📕

Tony Graham was a prefect in Merevale’s, and part of his duties was to look after the dormitory of which Harrison was one of the ornaments. It was a dormitory that required a good deal of keeping in order. Such choice spirits as Braithwaite of the Upper Fourth, and Mace, who was rapidly driving the master of the Lower Fifth into a premature grave, needed a firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand, but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen that Graham’s post was no sinecure. It was Harrison’s custom to throw off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into constant contact with Graham. Even in the dark it is occasionally possible for a prefect to tell where a noise comes from. And if the said prefect has been harassed six days in the week by a noise, and locates it suddenly on the seventh, it is wont to be bad for the producer and patentee of same.

And so it came about that Harrison, enjoying himself one night, after the manner of his kind, was suddenly dropped upon with violence. He had constructed an ingenious machine, consisting of a biscuit tin, some pebbles, and some string. He put the pebbles in the tin, tied the string to it, and placed it under a chest of drawers. Then he took the other end of the string to bed with him, and settled down to make a night of it. At first all went well. Repeated inquiries from Tony failed to produce the author of the disturbance, and when finally the questions ceased, and the prefect appeared to have given the matter up as a bad job, P. St. H. Harrison began to feel that under certain circumstances life was worth living. It was while he was in this happy frame of mind that the string, with which he had just produced a triumphant rattle from beneath the chest of drawers, was seized, and the next instant its owner was enjoying the warmest minute of a chequered career. Tony, like Brer Rabbit, had laid low until he was certain of the direction from which the sound proceeded. He had then slipped out of bed, crawled across the floor in a snakelike manner which would have done credit to a Red Indian, found the tin, and traced the string to its owner. Harrison emerged from the encounter feeling sore and unfit for any further recreation. This deed of the night left its impression on Harrison. The account had to be squared somehow, and in a few days his chance came. Merevale’s were playing a “friendly” with the School House, and in default of anybody better, Harrison had been pressed into service as umpire. This in itself had annoyed him. Cricket was not in his line⁠—he was not one of your flannelled fools⁠—and of all things in connection with the game he loathed umpiring most.

When, however, Tony came on to bowl at his end, vice Charteris, who had been hit for three fours in an over by Scott, the School slogger, he recognized that even umpiring had its advantages, and resolved to make the most of the situation.

Scott had the bowling, and he lashed out at Tony’s first ball in his usual reckless style. There was an audible click, and what the sporting papers call confident appeals came simultaneously from Welch, Merevale’s captain, who was keeping wicket, and Tony himself. Even Scott seemed to know that his time had come. He moved a step or two away from the wicket, but stopped before going farther to look at the umpire, on the off-chance of a miracle happening to turn his decision in the batsman’s favour.

The miracle happened.

“Not out,” said Harrison.

“Awfully curious,” he added genially to Tony, “how like a bat those bits of grass sound! You have to be jolly smart to know where a noise comes from, don’t you!”

Tony grunted disgustedly, and walked back again to the beginning of his run.

If ever, in the whole history of cricket, a man was out leg-before-wicket, Scott was so out to Tony’s second ball. It was hardly worth appealing for such a certainty. Still, the formality had to be gone through.

“How was that?” inquired Tony.

“Not out. It’s an awful pity, don’t you think, that they don’t bring in that new leg-before rule?”

“Seems to me,” said Tony bitterly, “the old rule holds pretty good when a man’s leg’s bang in front.”

“Rather. But you see the ball didn’t pitch straight, and the rule says⁠—”

“Oh, all right,” said Tony.

The next ball Scott hit for four, and the next after that for a couple. The fifth was a yorker, and just grazed the leg stump. The sixth was a beauty. You could see it was going to beat the batsman from the moment it left Tony’s hand. Harrison saw it perfectly.

“No ball,” he shouted. And just as he spoke Scott’s off-stump ricocheted towards the wicket-keeper.

“Heavens, man,” said Tony, fairly roused out of his cricket manners, a very unusual thing for him. “I’ll swear my foot never went over the crease. Look, there’s the mark.”

“Rather not. Only, you see, it seemed to me you chucked that time. Of course, I know you didn’t mean to, and all that sort of thing, but still, the rules⁠—”

Tony would probably have liked to have said something very forcible about the rules at this point, but it occurred to him that after all Harrison was only within his rights, and that it was bad form to dispute the umpire’s decision. Harrison walked off towards square-leg with a holy joy.

But he was too much of an artist to overdo the