collected face, and the one stroke he saw him make, before diving into the dressing-room to clap on his pads. To think that Evan was still in, and on the high road to a century if anybody could stop with him! To think he should have chosen this very afternoon!
It was at this point that the hard Fates softened, for a time only, yet a time worth the worst they could do to Jan now. They might not have given him pause to put his pads on properly; they might not have suffered him to get his breath. When he had done both, and even had a wash, and pulled his cap well over his wet hair, they might have kept him waiting till the full flavour of their late misdeeds turned his heart sick and faint within him. Instead of all or any of this, they propped up Chilton for another 15 runs, and then sent Jan in with 33 to get and Evan not out 84.
But they might have spared the doomed wretch the tremendous cheering that greeted his supposed resurrection from the sick-room to which—obviously—his heroic efforts of the morning had brought him. It took Evan to counteract the irony of that reception with a little dose on his own account.
"Keep your end up," whispered Evan, coming out to meet the captain a few yards from the pitch, "and I can get them. Swallow's off the spot and the rest are pifflers. Keep up your end and leave the runs to me."
It was the tone of pure injunction, from the one who might have been captain to his last hope. But that refinement was lost on Jan; he could only stare at the cool yet heated face, all eagerness and confidence, as though nothing whatever had been happening off the ground. And his stare did draw a change of look—a swift unspoken question—the least little cloud, that vanished at Jan's reply.
