Anyhow, it's just as much the Parretts business as ours, and they aren't doing anything, I know." "It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up," said Riddell.
"It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off--even if they were to lick us." Wyndham went soon afterwards.

Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy's views on this burning question.

And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham's present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett's and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.
The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat- house.

Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.
Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up.
After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.
"I want Tom," he said, "to steer me up to the Willows." "You might have let me known you'd want the gig yesterday," said the man, rather surlily; "I'd have left it out for you overnight." Had it been Bloomfield or Fairbairn, or any other of the boating heroes of Willoughby, Blades the boatman would have sung a very different song.
But a boatman does not know anything about senior classics.
"You'll find a boat moored by the landing there," said that functionary; "and give a call for young Alf, he'll do to steer you." But this would not suit Riddell at all.

"No," said he; "I want Tom, please, and tell him to be quick." The man went off surlily, and Riddell was left to kick his heels for twenty minutes in a state of very uncomfortable suspense.
At length, to his relief, Tom, a knowing youth of about fourteen, appeared, with a cushion over one shoulder and a pair of sculls over the other, and the embarkation was duly effected.
Tom was a privileged person at Willoughby.