"Why don't you cheer your captain, Tom?" I overheard a father say to his
young hopeful.
"No fear!" said the frenzied Biffenite. "Bourne is a beast!"
In fact, the only one who seemed to derive any pleasure from Bourne's
prowess in the field was Acton himself. He used to sit near the
flag-staff, and when Phil made his splendid late cut, whose applause was
so generous as his? whose joy so great? Acton's manoeuvres were on the
highest artistic levels, I can assure you, and in the eyes of the
fellows generally, his was a case of persecuted forgiving virtue. Acton,
too, kept in old Corker's good books, and his achievements in the way of
classics made the old master beam upon him with his keen blue eye.
I saw with dismay how persistently unpopular Phil remained, and I heard
the charms of Acton sung daily by monitor after monitor, until I saw
that Acton had captured the whole body bar Phil's own staunch friends,
Baines, Roberts, and Vercoe. And then it dawned upon me that Acton was
making a bid for the captaincy himself, and when I had convinced myself
that this was his object, I felt angrier than I can remember. I
thereupon wrote to Aspinall, gave him a full, true, and particular
account of Acton's campaign against Phil, and asked him to release
me--and Phil--from our promise of secrecy regarding the football-match
accident. His reply comforted me, and I knew that, come what might, I
had a thunderbolt in my pocket in Aspinall's letter, which could knock
Acton off the Captain's chair if he tried for that blissful seat.
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