The elms rustled, the sparrows in the ivy just outside
the window chirped and fluttered about, quarrelling, and making it up
again; the rooks, young and old, talked in chorus, and the merry shouts
of the boys and the sweet click of the cricket-bats came up cheerily
from below.
"Dear George," said Tom, "I am so glad to be let up to see you at last.
I've tried hard to come so often, but they wouldn't let me before."
"Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was
obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad
you didn't get up, for you might have caught it; and you couldn't stand
being ill, with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too,
I hear. I'm so glad."
"Yes; ain't it jolly?" said Tom proudly. "I'm ninth too. I made forty at
the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out. So I was put in
above Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the
twenty-two."
"Well, I think you ought to be higher yet," said Arthur, who was as
jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as a scholar.
"Never mind. I don't care about cricket or anything now you're getting
well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me
come up. Nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now directly, won't you?
You won't believe how clean I've kept the study.
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