"Now!" Crab places the ball at the word, old Brooke kicks, and it rises slowly and truly as the School rush forward.
Then a moment's pause, while both sides look up at the spinning ball.
There it flies, straight between the two posts, some five feet above the cross-bar, an unquestioned goal; and a shout of real, genuine joy rings out from the School-house players-up, and a faint echo of it comes over the close from the goal-keepers under the Doctor's wall.

A goal in the first hour--such a thing hasn't been done in the School-house match these five years.
"Over!" is the cry.

The two sides change goals, and the School-house goal-keepers come threading their way across through the masses of the School, the most openly triumphant of them--amongst whom is Tom, a School-house boy of two hours' standing--getting their ears boxed in the transit.

Tom indeed is excited beyond measure, and it is all the sixth-form boy, kindest and safest of goal-keepers, has been able to do, to keep him from rushing out whenever the ball has been near their goal.

So he holds him by his side, and instructs him in the science of touching.
At this moment Griffith, the itinerant vender of oranges from Hill Morton, enters the close with his heavy baskets.