The nearer of these two white
dolls must be Jos, darling of fifteen thousand frenzied people.
Stirling punched a neighbour in the side to attract his attention.
"What's the score?" he demanded of the neighbour, who scowled and then
grinned.
"Two--one--agen uz!" The other growled.
"It'll take our b----s all their time to draw. They're playing a man
short."
"Accident?"
"No! Referee ordered him off for rough play."
Several spectators began to explain, passionately, furiously, that the
referee's action was utterly bereft of common sense and justice; and I
gathered that a less gentlemanly crowd would undoubtedly have lynched
the referee. The explanations died down, and everybody except me resumed
his fierce watch on the field.
I was recalled from the exercise of a vague curiosity upon the set,
anxious faces around me by a crashing, whooping cheer which in volume
and sincerity of joy surpassed all noises in my experience. This massive
cheer reverberated round the field like the echoes of a battleship's
broadside in a fiord. But it was human, and therefore more terrible than
guns. I instinctively thought: "If such are the symptoms of pleasure,
what must be the symptoms of pain or disappointment?" Simultaneously
with the expulsion of the unique noise the expression of the faces
changed.
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