gray. As time went on, and his average for Lower Borlock reached the
fifties and stayed there, Mike began, though he would not have admitted
it, to enjoy himself. It was not Wrykyn, but it was a very decent
substitute.

The only really considerable element making for discomfort now was Mr.
Downing. By bad luck it was in his form that Mike had been placed on
arrival; and Mr. Downing, never an easy form master to get on with,
proved more than usually difficult in his dealings with Mike.

They had taken a dislike to each other at their first meeting; and it
grew with further acquaintance. To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a
master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his
official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes.
To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing for
the school and apparently had none of the healthy instincts which should
be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on the
healthy boy.

The two lived in a state of simmering hostility, punctuated at intervals
by crises, which usually resulted in Lower Borlock having to play some
unskilled laborer in place of their star batsman, employed doing
"overtime."

One of the most acute of these crises, and the most important, in that
it was the direct cause of Mike's appearance in Sedleigh cricket, had to
do with the third weekly meeting of the School Fire Brigade.

It may be remembered that this well-supported institution was under Mr.
Downing's special care. It was, indeed, his pet hobby and the apple