Mike

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Excerpt

It was a morning in the middle of April, and the Jackson family were consequently breakfasting in comparative silence. The cricket season had not begun, and except during the cricket season they were in the habit of devoting their powerful minds at breakfast almost exclusively to the task of victualling against the labours of the day. In May, June, July, and August the silence was broken. The three grown-up Jacksons played regularly in first-class cricket, and there was always keen competition among their brothers and sisters for the copy of the Sportsman which was to be found on the hall table with the letters. Whoever got it usually gloated over it in silence till urged wrathfully by the multitude to let them know what had happened; when it would appear that Joe had notched his seventh century, or that Reggie had been run out when he was just getting set, or, as sometimes occurred, that that ass Frank had dropped Fry or Hayward in the slips before he had scored, with the result that the spared expert had made a couple of hundred and was still going strong.

In such a case the criticisms of the family circle, particularly of the smaller Jackson sisters, were so breezy and unrestrained that Mrs. Jackson generally felt it necessary to apply the closure. Indeed, Marjory Jackson, aged fourteen, had on three several occasions been fined pudding at lunch for her caustic comments on the batting of her brother Reggie in important fixtures. Cricket was a tradition in the family, and the ladies, unable to their sorrow to play the game themselves, were resolved that it should not be their fault if the standard was not kept up.

On this particular morning silence reigned. A deep gasp from some small Jackson, wrestling with bread-and-milk, and an occasional remark from Mr. Jackson on the letters he was reading, alone broke it.

“Mike’s late again,” said Mrs. Jackson plaintively, at last.

“He’s getting up,” said Marjory. “I went in to see what he was doing, and he was asleep. So,” she added with a satanic chuckle, “I squeezed a sponge over him. He swallowed an awful lot, and then he woke up, and tried to catch me, so he’s certain to be down soon.”

“Marjory!”

“Well, he was on his back with his mouth wide open. I had to. He was snoring like anything.”

“You might have choked him.”

“I did,” said Marjory with satisfaction. “Jam, please, Phyllis, you pig.”

Mr. Jackson looked up.

“Mike will have to be more punctual when he goes to Wrykyn,” he said.

“Oh, father, is Mike going to Wrykyn?” asked Marjory. “When?”

“Next term,” said Mr. Jackson. “I’ve just heard from Mr. Wain,” he added across the table to Mrs. Jackson. “The house is full, but he is turning a small room into an extra dormitory, so he can take Mike after all.”

The first comment on this momentous piece of news came from Bob Jackson. Bob was eighteen. The following term would be his last at Wrykyn, and, having won through so far without the infliction of a small brother, he disliked the prospect of not being allowed to finish as he had begun.

“I say!” he said. “What?”

“He ought to have gone before,” said Mr. Jackson. “He’s fifteen. Much too old for that private school. He has had it all his own way there, and it isn’t good for him.”

“He’s got cheek enough for ten,” agreed Bob.

“Wrykyn will do him a world of good.”

“We aren’t in the same house. That’s one comfort.”

Bob was in Donaldson’s. It softened the blow to a certain extent that Mike should be going to Wain’s. He had the same feeling for Mike that most boys of eighteen have for their fifteen-year-old brothers. He was fond of him in the abstract, but preferred him at a distance.

Marjory gave tongue again. She had rescued the jam from Phyllis, who had shown signs of finishing it, and was now at liberty to turn her mind to less pressing matters. Mike was her special ally, and anything that affected his fortunes affected her.

“Hooray! Mike’s going to Wrykyn. I bet he gets into the first eleven his first term.”

“Considering there are eight old colours left,” said Bob loftily, “besides heaps of last year’s seconds, it’s hardly likely that a kid like Mike’ll get a look in. He might get his third, if he sweats.”

The aspersion stung Marjory.

“I bet he gets in before you, anyway,” she said.

Bob disdained to reply. He was among those heaps of last year’s seconds to whom he had referred. He was a sound bat, though lacking the brilliance of his elder brothers, and he fancied that his cap was a certainty this season. Last year he had been tried once or twice. This year it should be all right.

Mrs. Jackson intervened.

“Go on with your breakfast, Marjory,” she said. “You mustn’t say ‘I bet’ so much.”

Marjory bit off a section of her slice of bread-and-jam.

“Anyhow, I bet he does,” she muttered truculently through it.