The White Feather | Page 2

year
to anyone who can do a thing. Only Barry and myself left from last
year's team. I never saw such a clearance as there was after the summer
term."
"Where are the boys of the Old Brigade?" sighed Clowes.
"I don't know. I wish they were here," said Allardyce.
Trevor and Clowes had come down, after the Easter term had been in
progress for a fortnight, to play for an Oxford A team against the
school. The match had resulted in an absurdly easy victory for the
visitors by over forty points. Clowes had scored five tries off his own
bat, and Trevor, if he had not fed his wing so conscientiously, would
probably have scored an equal number. As it was, he had got through
twice, and also dropped a goal. The two were now having a late tea
with Allardyce in his study. Allardyce had succeeded Trevor as Captain
of Football at Wrykyn, and had found the post anything but a sinecure.
For Wrykyn had fallen for the time being on evil days. It was
experiencing the reaction which so often takes place in a school in the
year following a season of exceptional athletic prosperity. With Trevor
as captain of football, both the Ripton matches had been won, and also
three out of the four other school matches. In cricket the eleven had had
an even finer record, winning all their school matches, and likewise
beating the M.C.C. and Old Wrykinians. It was too early to prophesy
concerning the fortunes of next term's cricket team, but, if they were
going to resemble the fifteen, Wrykyn was doomed to the worst athletic
year it had experienced for a decade.
"It's a bit of a come-down after last season, isn't it?" resumed Allardyce,
returning to his sorrows. It was a relief to him to discuss his painful
case without restraint.
"We were a fine team last year," agreed Clowes, "and especially strong
on the left wing. By the way, I see you've moved Barry across."
"Yes. Attell can't pass much, but he passes better from right to left than
from left to right; so, Barry being our scoring man, I shifted him across.
The chap on the other wing, Stanning, isn't bad at times. Do you
remember him? He's in Appleby's. Then Drummond's useful at half."
"Jolly useful," said Trevor. "I thought he would be. I recommended you
last year to keep your eye on him."

"Decent chap, Drummond," said Clowes.
"About the only one there is left in the place," observed Allardyce
gloomily.
"Our genial host," said Clowes, sawing at the cake, "appears to have
that tired feeling. He seems to have lost that joie de vivre of his, what?"
"It must be pretty sickening," said Trevor sympathetically. "I'm glad I
wasn't captain in a bad year."
"The rummy thing is that the worse they are, the more side they stick
on. You see chaps who wouldn't have been in the third in a good year
walking about in first fifteen blazers, and first fifteen scarves, and first
fifteen stockings, and sweaters with first fifteen colours round the edges.
I wonder they don't tattoo their faces with first fifteen colours."
"It would improve some of them," said Clowes.
Allardyce resumed his melancholy remarks. "But, as I was saying, it's
not only that the footer's rotten. That you can't help, I suppose. It's the
general beastliness of things that I bar. Rows with the town, for
instance. We've been having them on and off ever since you left. And
it'll be worse now, because there's an election coming off soon. Are you
fellows stopping for the night in the town? If so, I should advise you to
look out for yourselves."
"Thanks," said Clowes. "I shouldn't like to see Trevor sand-bagged.
Nor indeed, should I--for choice--care to be sand-bagged myself. But,
as it happens, the good Donaldson is putting us up, so we escape the
perils of the town.
"Everybody seems so beastly slack now," continued Allardyce. "It's
considered the thing. You're looked on as an awful blood if you say you
haven't done a stroke of work for a week. I shouldn't mind that so much
if they were some good at anything. But they can't do a thing. The
footer's rotten, the gymnasium six is made up of kids an inch high--we
shall probably be about ninetieth at the Public Schools'
Competition--and there isn't any one who can play racquets for nuts.
The only thing that Wrykyn'll do this year is to get the Light-Weights at
Aldershot. Drummond ought to manage that. He won the Feathers last
time. He's nearly a stone heavier now, and awfully good. But he's the
only man we shall send up, I expect. Now that O'Hara and Moriarty are
both gone, he's