[14]

NORRIS TAKES A SHORT HOLIDAY


'It's all rot,' observed Pringle, 'to say that they haven't a chance,
because they have.'

He and Lorimer were passing through the cricket-field on their way back
from an early morning visit to the baths, and had stopped to look at
Leicester's House team (revised version) taking its daily hour of
fielding practice. They watched the performance keenly and critically,
as spies in an enemy's camp.

'Who said they hadn't a chance?' said Lorimer. 'I didn't.'

'Oh, everybody. The chaps call them the Kindergarten and the Kids'
Happy League, and things of that sort. Rot, I call it. They seem to
forget that you only want two or three really good men in a team if the
rest can field. Look at our crowd. They've all either got their
colours, or else are just outside the teams, and I swear you can't rely
on one of them to hold the merest sitter right into his hands.'

On the subject of fielding in general, and catching in particular,
Pringle was feeling rather sore. In the match which his House had just
won against Browning's, he had put himself on to bowl in the second
innings. He was one of those bowlers who manage to capture from six to
ten wickets in the course of a season, and the occasions on which he