“Rot!” said Alan. “And whom could you have wanted to meet this evening? All the men at the guests’ table were absolute ticks.”
“I’ve never met a House man who didn’t think every other House man impossible outside the four people in his own set,” retorted Michael. “And yet, I suppose, you’ll say it’s the best college?”
Up in his rooms they pondered the long May day’s reluctant death, while the coffee-machine bubbled and fizzed and The Soul’s Awakening faintly kindled by the twilight was appropriately sentimental.
“Will you have a meringue?” Alan asked. “I expect there’s one in the cupboard.”
“I’m sure there is,” said Michael. “It’s very unlikely that there is a single cupboard in the House without a meringue. But no, thanks, all the same.”
They forsook the window-seat and pulled wicker-chairs very near to the tobacco-jar squatting upon the floor between them: they lit their pipes and sipped their coffee. For Alan the glories of the day floated before him in the smoke.
“It’s a pity,” he said, “Sterne missed that catch in the slips. Though of course I wasn’t bowling for the slips. Five for forty-eight would have looked pretty well. Still four for forty-eight isn’t so bad in an innings of 287. The point is whether they can afford to give a place to another bowler who’s no earthly use as a bat. It seems a bit of a tail. I went in eighth wicket both innings. Two—first knock. Blob—second. Still four for forty-eight was certainly the best. I ought to play in the first trial match.” So Alan voiced his hopes.
“Of course you will,” said Michael. “And at Lord’s. I think I shall ask my mother and sister up for Eights,” he added.
“What’s the matter?” Michael asked. “You won’t have to worry about them. I’ll explain you’re busy with cricket. Stella inquired after you in a letter this week.”
During the Easter vacation Alan had stayed once or twice in Cheyne Walk, and Stella who had come back from an arduous time with music and musical people in Germany had seemed to take a slightly sharper interest in his existence.
“Give her my—er—love, when you write,” said Alan very nonchalantly. “And I don’t think I’d say anything about those four wickets for forty-eight. I don’t fancy she’s very keen on cricket. It might bore her.”