"He calls me feeble!" shouted Jimmy Silver. "By James, I've put a man
to sleep for less."

It was one of his amusements to express himself from time to time in a
melodramatic fashion, sometimes accompanying his words with suitable
gestures. It was on one of these occasions--when he had assumed at a
moment's notice the _role_ of the "Baffled Despot", in an
argument with Kennedy in his study on the subject of the house
football team--that he broke what Mr Blackburn considered a valuable
door with a poker. Since then he had moderated his transports.

"They've got to make seventy-nine," said Kennedy.

Challis, the other first eleven man, was reading a green scoring-book.

"I don't think Kay's ought to have the face to stick the cup up in
their dining-room," he said, "considering the little they've done to
win it. If they _do_ win it, that is. Still, as they made two
hundred first innings, they ought to be able to knock off
seventy-nine. But I was saying that the pot ought to go to Fenn. Lot
the rest of the team had to do with it. Blackburn's, first innings,
hundred and fifty-one; Fenn, eight for forty-nine. Kay's, two hundred
and one; Fenn, a hundred and sixty-four not out. Second innings,
Blackburn's hundred and twenty-eight; Fenn ten for eighty. Bit thick,
isn't it? I suppose that's what you'd call a one-man team."

Williams, one of the other prefects, who had just sat down at the
piano for the purpose of playing his one tune--a cake-walk, of which,
through constant practice, he had mastered the rudiments--spoke over
his shoulder to Silver.