on, and Warner or Hedge, with young Brooke and the relics of the bull-dogs, break through and carry the ball back; and old Brooke ranges the field like Job’s war-horse. The thickest scrummage parts asunder before his rush, like the waves before a clipper’s bows; his cheery voice rings out over the field, and his eye is everywhere. And if these miss the ball, and it rolls dangerously in front of our goal, Crab Jones and his men have seized it and sent it away towards the sides with the unerring drop-kick. This is worth living for—the whole sum of school-boy existence gathered up into one straining, struggling half-hour, a half-hour worth a year of common life.
The quarter to five has struck, and the play slackens for a minute before goal; but there is Crew, the artful dodger, driving the ball in behind our goal, on the island side, where our quarters are weakest. Is there no one to meet him? Yes; look at little East! The ball is just at equal distances between the two, and they rush together, the young man of seventeen and the boy of twelve, and kick it at the same moment. Crew passes on without a stagger; East is hurled forward by the shock, and plunges on his shoulder, as if he would bury himself in the ground; but the ball rises straight into the air, and falls behind Crew’s back, while the “bravoes” of the School-house attest the pluckiest charge of all that hard-fought day. Warner picks East up lame and half stunned, and he hobbles back into goal, conscious of having played the man.
And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him. Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former charges have been child’s play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them, but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage, and plunges in. It wavers for a moment; he has the ball. No, it has passed him, and his voice rings out clear over the advancing tide, “Look out in goal!” Crab Jones catches it for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon him and passes over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his straw in his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.
There stands the School-house prepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and Tom Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this time. Now is your time, Tom. The blood of all the Browns is up, and the two rush in together, and throw themselves on the ball, under the very feet of the advancing column—the prepostor on his hands and knees, arching his back, and Tom all along on his face. Over them topple the leaders of the rush, shooting over the back of the prepostor, but falling flat on Tom, and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass. “Our ball,” says the prepostor, rising with his prize; “but get up there; there’s a little fellow under you.” They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is discovered, a motionless body.
Old Brooke picks him up. “Stand back, give him air,” he says; and then feeling his limbs, adds, “No bones broken.—How do you feel, young un?”
“Hah-hah!” gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; “pretty well, thank you—all right.”
“Who is he?” says Brooke.
“Oh, it’s Brown; he’s a new boy; I know him,” says East, coming up.
“Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player,” says Brooke.
And five o’clock strikes. “No side” is called, and the first day of the Schoolhouse match is over.
CHAPTER VI—AFTER THE MATCH.
“Some food we had.”
—Shakespeare.
[Greek text]
—Theocr. Id.
As the boys scattered away from the ground, and East, leaning on Tom’s arm, and limping along, was beginning to consider what luxury they should go and buy for tea to celebrate that glorious victory, the two Brookes came striding by. Old Brooke caught sight of East, and stopped; put his hand kindly on his shoulder, and said, “Bravo, youngster; you played famously. Not much the matter, I hope?”
“No, nothing at all,” said East—”only a little twist from that charge.”
“Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday.” And the leader passed on, leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in England would have made him, and Tom ready to give one of his ears for as much notice. Ah! light words of those whom we love and honour, what a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you! Surely for these things also God will ask an account.
“Tea’s directly after locking-up, you see,” said East, hobbling along as fast as he could, “so you come along down to Sally Harrowell’s; that’s our School-house tuck-shop. She bakes such stunning murphies, we’ll have a penn’orth each for tea. Come along, or they’ll all be gone.”
Tom’s new purse and money burnt in his pocket; he wondered, as they toddled through the quadrangle and along the street, whether East would be insulted if he suggested further extravagance, as he had not sufficient faith in a pennyworth of potatoes. At last he blurted out,—
“I say, East, can’t we get something else besides potatoes? I’ve got lots of money, you know.”
“Bless us, yes; I forgot,” said East, “you’ve only just come. You see all my tin’s been gone this twelve weeks—it hardly ever lasts beyond the first fortnight; and our allowances were all stopped this morning for broken windows, so I haven’t got a penny. I’ve got a tick at Sally’s, of course; but then I hate running it high, you see, towards the end of the half, ’cause one has to shell out for it all directly one comes back, and that’s a bore.”
Tom didn’t understand much of this talk, but seized on the fact that East had no money, and was denying himself some little pet luxury in consequence. “Well, what shall I buy?” said he, “I’m uncommon hungry.”
“I say,” said East, stopping to look at him and rest his leg, “you’re a trump, Brown. I’ll do the same by you next half. Let’s have a pound of sausages then. That’s the best grub for tea I know of.”
“Very well,” said Tom, as pleased as possible; “where do they sell them?”
“Oh, over here, just opposite.” And they crossed the street and walked into the cleanest little front room of a small house, half parlour, half shop, and bought a pound of most particular sausages, East talking pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put them in paper, and Tom doing the paying part.
From Porter’s they adjourned to Sally Harrowell’s, where they found a lot of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes, and relating their own exploits in the day’s match at the top of their voices. The street opened at once into Sally’s kitchen, a low brick-floored room, with large recess for fire, and chimney-corner seats. Poor little Sally, the most good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling about, with a napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the neighbours’ cottages up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife’s earnings, stood in a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of repartee with every boy in turn. “Stumps, you lout, you’ve had too much beer again to-day.” “’Twasn’t of your paying for, then.” “Stumps’s calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass.” “Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours,” etc. Very poor stuff it was, but it served to make time pass; and every now and then Sally arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot running off to the house with “Put me down two-penn’orth, Sally;” “Put down three-penn’orth between me and Davis,” etc. How she ever kept the accounts so straight as she did, in her head and on her