When the Sportif Club received the challenge they doubted whether to accept it, as the Societe Athletique was rumoured to include several veterans approaching fifteen years of age and of tremendous physique.  On being conceded the choice of ground, however, they took up the gage and trained and practised with such vigour that two days before the date of the match Georges Darre, right back, punted his toe through a previously suspected weak spot in the ball and irreparably ruined it.  The Societe Athletique was informed of the disaster and asked to supply a ball, but they answered that no known authority or precedent existed for visiting teams providing the accessories.  There was also an insinuation that the story of the burst ball was a fabrication, designed to give the Sportif Club a loophole of escape from a contest that spelt certain defeat.

Stung to the quick, the deuxieme equipage made an urgent appeal to the premier equipage of the Sportif Club, who replied that this was the first intimation they had had of the existence of a deuxieme equipage, and recommended a tourney at marbles or a combat of peg-tops as being more suitable to their tender years.

Naturally this insult could not be brooked, and it was decided to break away from the parent body and reorganise under the title of the Racing Club de Petiteville; but this did not help them to solve the question of a new ball.  Then it was that Theo Navet, left half, and son of the blanchisseuse in the rue Napoleon, had an inspiration, and Percival’s pyjamas became linked up with the destinies of the club.

* * * * *

“It wouldn’t surprise me, Sir,” said Elfred on the evening when Petiteville was ringing with the news of the Racing Club’s victory by 4 buts to 2, “if you are the only officer in Mess to-night with a reelly clean collar.”

“And why am I singled out for so much honour?” asked Percival, taking the slacks which Elfred produced from between the mattresses.  “Has the Washer-women’s Union handed in notices and made a complimentary exception in my case?”

“Well, Sir, you ’ave been favoured, but it weren’t a strike,” explained Elfred.  “You know, Sir, there’s been an alarming short ration of coal an’ fuel down in the village for a long time, an’ two days ago Madame Navet, who does the orficers’ washing, came up an’ said she was bokoo fashay but the washing was napood for the week, becos she couldn’t buy, beg, borrer nor steal enough fuel to keep her copper biling....  Do we wear the yaller boots to-night, Sir, or the very yaller ones?”

“The light pair,” said Percival, “to give tone to the clean collar.  But go on.”

“Well, I put it to Madame as my orficer was a very partickler gent, an’ she’d gotter do our washing even if she ’ad to light ’er fire with the family dresser.  She said she was desolated; she ’adn’t sufficient coal to take the chill off a mouchoir.  I thought of trying to borrer a sack for ’er from the quarter bloke, but our relations ’ave never been the same since the time I took my weekly ration of ‘Pink Princesses’ back an’ arsked ’im to change ’em for cigarettes with a bit o’ tobacco in.