IT was the eve of Little Clumpton versus Hickory. To those who are unfamiliar with these haunts of ancient peace this may seem a chronicle of the infinitely little. The Utopians, however, dwelling there remote, were quite aware that Waterloo, nay, even the Battle of Omdurman, was a picnic in comparison with Little Clumpton versus Hickory. Therefore let the nations heed.

Half our team were sitting in my billiard-room discussing the prospects of the morrow. Opinion really was unanimous for once: Little Clumpton must not lose.

“Lose!” said the Optimist grandly, “is it England, or is it Hickory?”

“Only Hickory,” said the Pessimist, “and the Trenthams.”

“It can be W. G. and Jackson, if they like to bring ’em,” said the Optimist; “and then they’ll[10] finish sick. They’ll simply flop before Charlie’s ribsters, and Billy’s slows.”

“H’m!” said the Pessimist.

“Think so?” said the Worry.

“Certain,” said the Optimist. “Before now we’ve had ’em out for fifty.”

“Yes,” said the Pessimist, “and before now we’ve had ’em out for three hundred and fifty.”

“But,” said the Humourist, “I hadn’t developed my head-ball then.”

The Humourist would find it as difficult to exist without his “head-ball,” as Attewell without his gentle maiden.

“Well, I suppose it all depends upon the weather,” said the Worry, with his usual inconsequence. “How’s the glass?”

“Quite well, thank you,” said the Humourist, brandishing a huge whisky and Apollinaris.

“Going down,” said the Treasurer, with great gloominess. The Treasurer had been elected to his dignity because it was feared that he was Scotch on his mother’s side.

Here the Captain came into the conversation. He took his corn-cob slowly from his mouth, pressed the tobacco down with that air of simple majesty that is the hall-mark of the great, and then began to smoke again in a very solemn manner. This, for the Captain, was a speech.[11] And as it is only the fool who can speak without giving himself away, this was as it should be. His words were fit though few. Hence the tradition, that though he didn’t say much his ideas were very beautiful. The Secretary regularly sat in a listening attitude behind his chair, so that if by any chance the great man did commit an utterance, he could jot it down upon his cuff. And it was an open secret that every time the Secretary changed his shirt he entered the Captain’s requests for a milk and soda or a pipe-light in the archives of the Club.

The Captain was the gentlest of men. There was a suavity in his coffee-coloured face and his pale blue eye that grew positively weird in one who was good for another fifty every time he had the screen moved. Though he had developed a peculiar habit of playing for the Gentlemen at Lord’s, he had a charity that covered a multitude of umpires, and when l.b.w. did not attempt to demonstrate to the pavilion by the laws of Sir Isaac Newton that the ball had not pitched straight by the vulgarest fraction of an inch. His mien had the wholly classic calm of those who have their biographies in Wisden. His language in its robustest passages was as fragile as Mrs. Meynell’s prose. If a small boy danced behind the bowler’s arm, it was claimed for the Captain that he[12] actually employed “please” and “thank you.”[A] Even in the throes of a run out his talk retained its purity to a remarkable degree. His strongest expletive was a pained expression. His beverage seldom rose beyond a milk and soda. Life with him was a very chaste affair.

The Secretary was of another kidney. He always got up a bit before the lark, since his rule of life was to get a start of the rest of nature. He was eminently fitted for great place. Had he been other than Secretary to the Little Clumpton Cricket Club he must have been Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and dictated carefully chosen insults to the French and other dwellers in outer darkness. Nevertheless, he was all things to all men. He could be as persuasive as tobacco, he could unloose the wrath of Jove. If you came to him at the eleventh hour and said: “Beastly sorry, Lawson, but can’t possibly play to-morrow,” you could rely on his well of English being defiled. On the other hand, if he came to you and said: “I say, old man, Jordan’s lost his jolly aunt; Boulter’s split his blighted thumb, and I really can’t take no, you know, shall want your batting awful bad, you know,” his accent was a song. He[13] was the only man who could subdue the best bowler when the slips weren’t snapping ’em. He was the only man who dared address the Captain on the field. He had the courage to explain to the fair sex, “what those strange things in white coats with mufflers round their waists are standing there for?” He could suggest to the intelligent foreigner that the criquette is a sport, not a religious exercise; and he was such a fine tactician that he always fielded point. Merryweather, known familiarly as “Jessop,” because of his audacity, was the one person who ventured to tell the Secretary that he couldn’t play to-morrow, “as I’m going golfing.” And even he, lion-hearted as he was, presently gave up that pastime for less violent amusements. “Billiards gone to grass,” the Secretary considered an insufficient phrase, but the Secretary’s views on golf are not going to be printed.

Lawson’s was not the highest form of cricket. His bowling was a jest; his batting was a comic interlude. Yet his Captain was wont to say, “Give me Lawson at a pinch, and I’ll give you Grace and Ranjitsinhji.” For his force of character was such that when the bowling was used up he would go on with lobs and take a wicket; when a rot set in, before going in to stop it, he would tell them to send him a cup of[14] tea at five; whilst he was such a master in the art of playing for a draw that light-minded persons called him “Notts.” True, his style was not the style of Gunn and Shrewsbury, nor were his methods conspicuously pretty, but none the less he was the source of several letters to the M.C.C. As an instance of his powers, last year but one, against I. Zingari, he stayed two hours for seven, brought down the rain and saved the match. There was not a breath of vanity about him, and in appearance he looked quite a simple ordinary soul. But if it was an absolute necessity that Little Clumpton should win the toss, the Captain generally sent Lawson out to spin; and if the other side, in the innocence of their hearts, thought they knew a trick that Little Clumpton didn’t, the Secretary usually held it right to encourage them in that opinion.

Now though there was not a man present who would have admitted for a moment that he had the faintest fear of Hickory, there was no overriding the hard fact that the Captain had twice withdrawn his pipe from his mouth in the space of twenty minutes. The Secretary had noted this grim portent as he noted everything, and sat tugging his moustache with one hand, whilst with the other he worked out the Theory of the Toss (invented by himself) to five places of decimals.[15] Indeed, such an air of gloom presently settled on us all that the Pessimist declared that we had got already a bad attack of the Trenthams. Perhaps we had. Never previously had we faced more than two members of this redoubtable family at a time, but report said that to-morrow we must suffer the full brotherhood of four. Their deeds that season had been more terrible than ever. A. H., of Middlesex, had helped himself to 146 against Surrey at the Oval the previous week, and was going out with Stoddart in the autumn. H. C. was reputed to be the best bowler either ’Varsity had seen since Sammy Woods, an opinion poor Oxford had subscribed to in July at Lord’s; Captain George, although he liked to call himself a veteran, had an average of 72·3 for the Royal Artillery; whilst T. S. M., the Harrow Captain, had enjoyed the Eton match very much indeed, and rather thought he should enjoy the match with Little Clumpton too. As if this was not enough, the General Nuisance presently sauntered in, exactly an hour behind his time as usual. And to the consternation of us all the General Nuisance wore his most expansive simper.

“He’s only heard that the Trenthams are coming,” said the Worry. By trying to reassure us he sought to reassure himself.

“Confound you! are you going to dislocate your[16] face?” said the Secretary, aiming a cushion and a string of unprintable expressions at the General Nuisance. “What’s up now? Is Charlie crocked? Is Billy drinking? Good Lord! I hope there’s nothing gone wrong with the bowling!”

“Not yet,” said the General Nuisance sweetly; “but there will be, I’ll give you my word.”

“We shall have to try that muck o’ yours then,” said the Pessimist.

“Unfortunately I’m not playing to-morrow; I’m going fishing,” said the General Nuisance affably.

“Eh? What?”

It was the voice of the Secretary from behind the Captain’s chair. It was a psychological moment. Each man present had that nightmare of a feeling that afflicts you in the long-field when A. H. Trentham lifts one to you steeples high, curling some fifteen ways at once, which all the time you are hopelessly misjudging and that you know you are bound to drop. However, I had the presence of mind to distract the General Nuisance with a drink, while the Captain laid a soothing hand on the Secretary’s knee, and appealed to his moral nature. Brandy and soda, one grieves to say, inflamed rather than appeased the personal appearance of the General Nuisance. His simper became a grin.

[17]“Pipe up,” said that heroical man, the Treasurer, preparing for the worst; “out with it.”

“You will be very brave?” said the General Nuisance.

“Comfort, you blackguard,” said the Secretary, “Why do you grin? Speak or die!”

When the General Nuisance grinned, homicidal tendencies soiled minds of the most virgin whiteness.

The Captain took his pipe out and tapped it on his boot. It was a command that even the revolutionary spirit of the General Nuisance dared not disregard. It had the authority of an Act of Parliament.

“Well, brethren,” said the General Nuisance, “they are bringing Carteret and Elphinstone, that’s all.”

“And the Trenthams, too?” said I.

“And the Trenthams, too,” said he.

“It’s a good job we’re a good team,” said the Humourist.

It is true that the Secretary sat behind the Captain’s chair, but in the course of three minutes he contrived to emit such a quantity of language of a free and painful character, that to relieve the tension the Humourist kindly propounded this conundrum. Why is Bobby Abel batting like Lawson’s small talk? Because to look at ’em[18] you’d wonder how they could. This, I regret to say, is quite in the Humourist’s early manner, ere art had chastened nature. It lacks the polished pathos of those slow-drawn agonies at which the world grew pale. But as the Humourist strutted in his title because he took himself quite seriously, do not let us forget that this offspring of his wit was born in an hour of mental stress.

AT six next morning my man found me in pyjamas, flourishing a bat up and down a chalk line on the bedroom carpet.

“Are you quite sure it’s perfectly straight, William?”

“Quite straight, sir; but mind the wardrobe door, sir!”

“I think I’ll try that blind hit of Gunn’s between point and cover.”

“All right, sir; if you’ll just wait while I move the water-jug. Your left leg a little more across—just a little; and how’s the late cut this morning, sir?”

“Never healthier in its life. Here you are. Look out!”

Crash! Plop! The glass in the wardrobe door had met the fate of its predecessors. The aggravating thing about the wardrobe door is that if you have it of glass you must inevitably break it;[20] yet should you have a plain panel you can’t see what angle your bat’s at and where your feet are.

“I was hoping all the time that you’d smash it, sir,” said William in a confidential tone. “It’s a strange thing, sir, but every time you smash the wardrobe door you never get less than 50. If you remember, when you got that 82 last year against the Free Foresters you smashed it the morning of the match. Then that 61 against M.C.C. (O’Halloran and Roche an’ all), same thing occurred, if you recollect. And it’s my belief that you’ve smashed it worse this morning, sir, than you’ve ever done before. It might be the century to-day, sir.”

“I wonder if the water-jug or washhand-stand would help it,” said I reflectively; “because, William, if you really think they would——”

“Somehow,” said William hastily, “I haven’t quite the same faith in that there water-jug. I remember once you cracked it right across the spout and got ‘run out 3’ on that particular mornin’. Captain Cooper called you, and then sent you back, if you remember, sir, when you was halfway down the pitch.”

“I remember,” I groaned. “Those are the tragedies of which our little life is made!”

“And the washhand-stand ain’t no good at all, sir. Why, when you knocked the leg off it in[21] giving Mold the wood, you bagged a brace at Pigeon Hill that day on what they called a wicket, but what was really a hornamental lake.”

“Spare me the horrible details, William,” I said. A cold sensation was creeping down my spine.

Having tubbed and shaved I felt so fit as I walked down to have a look at the ground before breakfast that I had to restrain myself from jumping five-barred gates. It was a perfect morning, flushed with summer. The birds on the boughs were welcoming the young sun; the mists were running before him; the dew on the trees was dancing to him; whilst the drenched meadows and the cool haze receding to the hills promised ninety in the shade to follow. Evidently Nature, like a downright good sportsman, was going to let us have a real cricketers’ day for a true cricketing occasion. Such fragrance made the blood leap. Every muscle seemed electric. To snuff the chill airs was to feel as fit and full of devil as a racehorse. By Jove, I felt like getting ’em! There were clean off-drives in the eager brooks, clipping cuts for four in the sparkling grass, sweet leg glances in the singing hedgerows, inimitable hooks and behind-the-wicket strokes in the cheerful field noises and the bird-thrilled branches; and when the sun burst out more fully in premonition of what was to be his magnificent[22] display at Little Clumpton versus Hickory later in the day, I said to an unresponsive cow, “How do you like that, H. C.?” for I had just lifted the best bowler at either ’Varsity since Sammy Woods, clean out of the ground for six. And having begun to this tune, of course I went on getting ’em. I continued cutting, driving, and leg hitting at such a pace, that by the time I had made the half-mile to the ground that morning, a mere five minutes’ walk, I was rapidly approaching my century. They may talk of Jessop, but I think this gives a long start to any performances of his, although it is possible that he may have had to meet bowling rather more “upon the spot.” I was in great form though.

I found the ground-man standing beside the wicket, looking at it lovingly. He had his head on one side, as he gazed with an air as of Michael Angelo surveying his masterpiece.

“Mornin’ to you, sir!”

“Mornin’ Wiggles. How’s the wicket?”

“This ain’t no wicket, sir. It’s a bloomin’ billiard-table wot Dawson’s a’ inviting of Roberts to come and play on. And Lord, sir, have you seed the side that Hickory’s a-bringing—a bloomin’ county team. There’s them there Trenthams, all the boiling of ’em, and Carteret and Elphinstone of Kent. They do say as how Francis Ford and[23] Fry’s a-coming, too, as Hickory’s a bit weak in batting like, seeing as how Billy Thumbs the cobbler’s short o’ practice. Well, sir, I on’y hopes they comes, and Ranjy with ’em, because, if you come to think on it, Hickory ain’t got no side at all. And such a piece of concrete wot’s awaiting ’em! ’Tween you and me, sir, I think if I was a bowler I should take to batting for to-day.”

“We had better win the toss then,” I said gloomily.

“That’s a very good idea, sir, for I’m thinking whoever gets in on this, somebody’ll be so tired afore six-thirty.”

Looking at that wicket and brooding on the awful array of batsmen Hickory was bringing, and what the result must be if they only got in first, I was tempted of the devil. The turf was soft with dew. I had merely to press my heel once into that billiard-table to nip some of their prospective centuries in the bud. And who shall say whether human frailty had prevailed against the wiles of evil had it not remembered that Hickory were not obliged to go in first.

I went home to breakfast trying to restrain my excess of “fitness.” For cricket is cussedness incarnate. You rise in the morning like a giant refreshed: your blood is jumping, the ball looks as big as a balloon, and you have a go at one you[24] ought to let alone, and spoon it up to cover. Excess of “fitness” gets more wickets than Lohmann ever took.

I was in the middle of the Sportsman and my fourth egg when William appeared with a countenance of tragedy.

“I can’t find it, sir; it’s clean gone!” he said.

“Not the bat with the wrapping at the bottom?” I gasped, turning pale.

“No, sir; worse than that,” he said.

“Speak!” I cried; “what is it?”

“Your cap,” he said. “The one you made the 82, the 61, and 67 not out in.”

“What, the Authentics! It must be found, or I don’t go in to-day. Couldn’t get a run without that cap.”

The sweat stood on my brow.

“It’s my belief, sir,” said William darkly, “that this here’s a bit O’ Hickory. They knows how, like W. G., its always one particular cap you gets your runs in, and they’ve had it took according.”

This was very nice of William. His tact was charming. But the idea of my facing Hickory without my lucky cap was as monstrous as the captain going out to toss without his George II. shilling.

“William,” I said, “if you have to take the[25] carpets up and have the chimneys swept, that cap must be found.”

William returned disconsolately to his search, whilst I fell into a train of dismal speculation. Falling to the Sportsman in despair my eye fell on a few items of a cheerful and peculiar interest:—

Reader (loquitur): “Damn his fine forcing method! I wonder why Wiggles hadn’t the sense to water that wicket. Anyway, I wish Jacker had let him have his fling. They’re always worse when they’ve been run out.”

I could read no more. The Sportsman dropped from my unheeding hands, and I had just begun to whistle the opening bars of the “Dead March,” when two brown boots and the lower parts of a pair of grey flannel trousers wriggled from the lawn through the open window. They were surmounted[28] two seconds later by a straw hat, a straw-coloured moustache, and an aquiline nose, which I identified as belonging to the General Nuisance. He had an exquisitely neat brown paper parcel under his arm, and a smile of fifty candle-power illuminating his classic features. I was horrified to see it.

“You’re early this morning,” I said resignedly. “It wants a quarter to eight yet. Have some breakfast?”

“Tha-anks,” he drawled, “but I’ve had my milk. I’ve called round to bring you yours.”

As he spoke he removed the string from the parcel in the most leisurely manner and disclosed a pile of carefully folded newspapers with names pencilled on the corners. Having discovered mine, he handed it to me with that air of benevolent condescension that head masters wear on speech day.

“How nice of you!” I said. However, I’m afraid this irony was so delicate that he didn’t feel it.

“My dear fellow, not at all,” he said. “There’s one for everybody. I’m delivering ’em to the whole team, don’t you know.”

Needless to say, he had presented me with an immaculate copy of the Sportsman. I picked up my own discarded sheet from under the table.

[29]“Awf’ly obliged, old chap, but I’ve got one, thank you,” I said, pleasantly.

“That’s lucky,” said he, “you can give one to your friends. Rather pretty reading, isn’t it? Awf’ly decent set, Trenthams, Elphinstone, etcetera.”

“Git!” I said, gazing round for a boot-jack or a poker, or something equally likely to debase his physical beauty.

“Ta-ta then, see you later!”

To my infinite joy he appeared to be taking the hint. But he had only just conducted his infernal smile to the right side of the window, when he jerked it back again, and said:—

“Oh, I forgot! I say, Dimsdale, I ought to tell you this. I rather think Billy was drunk last night. His eyes are as red as a ferret’s this morning, and his housekeeper told me in confidence that when she got up this morning and went to call him she found master’s umbrella in bed and master sleeping in the umbrella-stand.”

“No, don’t say that,” I gasped, with a sinking at the heart. Alas! we’d only got two bowlers, and Billy was the one on whom we depended most.

“Fact!” said the General Nuisance cheerfully; “wouldn’t trouble you with it if I thought it wasn’t true. Lawson drove up with the Doctor as I came[30] away. I implored our gentle secretary not to mourn, since a few Seidlitzs and a stomach-pump can do a lot in a very little time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but it is generally slow bowlers who resort to intemperance, because as they’ve only got to lose their perfect length to embitter the lives of others, their possibilities become quite unbearable on a big occasion. At the M.C.C. match Lawson sat beside him at lunch both days counting his liqueurs. Poor old Lawson! I felt it my duty to assure him just now that it really took very little to make Billy lose his length. I also took the liberty of reminding him of what happened when he lost it once before, against Emeriti,—

5 overs.0 maidens.51 runs.0 wickets.

and Emeriti had got quite an ordinary side.”

Just as the muffineer arrived at the head of the General Nuisance, the General Nuisance was mean enough to duck. This act enabled the muffineer to crash through the plate-glass window.

“Timed that to a ‘T,’” said he. “Can see absolutely anything this morning. Certain to book fifty if I once get in, which I take to be a strong enough reason why an inscrutable Providence will cause us to lose the toss and keep me in the field all day.”

[31]“Hope you will be there,” said I savagely, “and I’d like to see you taking long-field on both ends. And I hope you’ll drop a catch in front of the ladies’ tent. And I hope when you come racing round the corner to make that magnificent one-hand dive to save the four, the bally thing’ll jump and hit you in the teeth. And if you do go in to bat I hope you’ll be bowled neck and heels first ball.”

Ignoring this peroration he again appeared to be at the point of withdrawing his hateful presence. But too well did I know the General Nuisance to anticipate such a consummation. He merely seated himself on the sill in an attitude that would enable him to cope with sudden emergencies, and then said:—

“Oh, by the way, the youngest Gunter girl; you know, the little one with the green eyes and the freckles—just got engaged they say.”

“Who to?” I said fiercely. The General Nuisance certainly plumbed the depths of human fiendishness, but in conversation he had a command of topics that were irresistible.

“Who to?” I said.

“One of the Trenthams,” he smiled. “Ta-ta! See you ten-thirty.”

He was gone at last, and I had barely time to praise Heaven’s clemency that this was even so,[32] when William entered with the face of an undertaker out of work.

“Clean gone, sir,” he said. “Abso-blooming-lutely! Looked high and low, and Mrs. Jennings ain’t no notion.”

“Looked in the lining of the bag?”

“Everywhere,” said the miserable William.

“Well,” said I, “unless it’s found I don’t get a run to-day.”

“I can tell you, sir,” said William, “that I’d rather lose my perquisites than that this should have ’appened at Little Clumpton v. Hickory. But there’s the Winchester, and the Magdalen, and the M.C.C. Couldn’t you get some in one of them, sir?”

“Daren’t risk it,” I said, “not at Little Clumpton v. Hickory. Yet, let me see, hasn’t Mr. Thornhill one of the Authentics?”

“Why, Lor’ bless me, that he ’ave, sir!”

“Well, get your bike at once, give my compliments and kind regards to Mr. Thornhill and tell him I’ve lost my Authentics and will he lend me his. Explain that it’s Little Clumpton v. Hickory, and that I can only get runs in the Authentics. It’s now eight-twenty, and it’s eighteen miles to Mr. Thornhill’s place. Can you bring it to me by eleven?”

[33]“Well, sir, if I don’t, you’ll know I’ve burst a tyre.”

Within five minutes William was riding to Thornhill’s as if his life depended on it, with the stable-boy to pace him.

I  CAME down to the ground at a little after ten. The match was to begin at eleven, sharp. The only sights of interest on my arrival were the ground-man marking out the crease, and the Worry at the nets in a brand-new outfit. The “pro” and three small boys were striving to knock a shilling off his middle.

“You’re touching ’em pretty this morning, Daunton,” said I, out of pure excellence of heart. I wished him to keep up his pecker.

“Think so?” he said nervously. “I’ve had an awful bad night, and I believe there’s something the matter with my wrist. I wish I wasn’t playing.”

The Worry’s life was a burden to him on match days. When he went in to bat he issued from the pavilion with a wild eye and a haggard mien, and a rooted idea that he was bound to be bowled first[35] ball. This he invariably played forward to, as the strain on his nervous system was so severe that it was a physical impossibility for him to wait and receive it in his crease. He counted every run he got, and, if there was the faintest doubt about a snick, he would say, “I hope you noticed that I touched that, umpire.”

The crowd was already beginning to assemble. Vehicles and pedestrians were flocking in from twenty miles around. Hickory was a neighbouring village, only seven miles distant, but the rivalry was so keen that the local public-houses did no trade while the great match was in progress. It always had been so, and always would be. Even in the early forties Little Clumpton v. Hickory had become historical. Alfred Mynn and Fuller Pilch had actually graced the annual encounter in the Park. There was only one match a season; two would have been more than human endurance could have borne; and the Park, which generations of its noble owners had been very proud to lend for this nation-shaking function, was the only cricket-ground in the vicinity that could hope to accommodate the rival partisans. It might have been that once on a time the ’Varsity match had been played on other turf than Lord’s; but the Park was the only spot in England that had ever had the privilege of witnessing Little Clumpton[36] v. Hickory on its velvet sward. Let kings depart and empires perish, but this always had been so and always would be!

To appear at Little Clumpton v. Hickory was not the lot of common men. Only the elect could hope to do so. To take wickets or make a score at this encounter was to become a classic in one’s lifetime. There were hoary veterans round about, whom the uninitiated might take to be mouldering mediocrities, but no—“see t’ owd gaffer theer? well, ’e wor a ’56 man; and t’ littlin theer across the rowad ’e wor ’59”—which being interpreted means that 1856 and 1859 were the dates of their distinction. Therefore do not let the young think, as unhappily they do just now, that they must write a book to become immortal. Why will not a few thousands of these seekers after fame, these budding novelists and early poets, take to cricket? For is it not more honourable, and certainly more glorious, to make a century at Little Clumpton v. Hickory, and make half a shire shout your praise, than to translate Omar Kháyyám and become a nuisance to posterity?

Presently I beheld a sight that nearly brought the tears into my eyes. The Optimist and the Pessimist were coming arm-in-arm across the grass. The lion lay down with the lamb at Little Clumpton v. Hickory. The Secretary walked alone[37] with looks and words for none. He was so positively dangerous that the General Nuisance forbore to ask him what bowling we had got.

Having changed, I was sallying forth from the pavilion in the possession of bat and ball for the purpose of “having a knock” when a sudden palpitation made the crowd vibrate.

“’Ere’s Hickory! Good owd Hickory!”

A solid English-throated cheer announced that the enemy were in sight. A thrill ran through me as I gazed in the direction of their coming, for certainly the appearance of such a celebrated side was something to be seen. It was. A four-in-hand came bumping along the stretch of uneven meadow at a clipping pace. And to my indignant horror and bewilderment I saw that the reins were commanded by a person that wore nice white cuffs and a brown holland blouse. Conceive the cream of English cricket with their legs tucked up on the top of that rocking, creaking, jumping, jolting coach at the mercy of a person in a brown holland blouse! It was a thing that required to be very clearly seen before it could be accepted. In agony of mind I rubbed my eyes and looked more intently at the furiously on-coming vehicle. Never a doubt its pace was reckless, criminally reckless, considering the priceless freight it bore.

“What do you think of that?” I cried, turning[38] in my distress to the man beside me. He happened to be the Ancient, so-called, because of his thoughtful air and his supernatural wisdom. “Just look at the confounded thing, I’m certain that girl’ll have it over. Gad! did you see her dodge that ditch by about three inches? Those men must be perfect fools! Why doesn’t that idiot beside her lend a hand? But some of these women are steep enough for anything. That girl ought to be talked to.”

“Well, suppose you do the talking,” said the Ancient, with his most reflective air. Then, as the drag lurched into our midst, wheels and harness grunting, the glossy animals in a lather; and they were drawn up with a sure hand in front of the pavilion while a cheering and gaping throng pressed about the wheels to impede the great men in their descent, the Ancient pensively continued, “Tell you what, my boy, I should rather like the chance of talking to that young person.”

To do her justice, she was certainly a source of comfort to the eye. When she yielded the reins and stood up on the footboard she had that air of simple resolution that is the source of England’s pride.

She was so tall and trim and strong, there was such a decision in her curves that her brown holland with white cuffs and collar, her Zingari tie,[39] and hat-band of the same red and yellow brilliance round a straw, with heavy coils of hair of a proper country fawn-colour beneath, lent her that look of candid capability that nature generally reserves for cricketers of the highest order. I never gave the cracks from Hickory a second thought. Everything about her was so clean, so cool, so absolute, that before she had left the box I had quite convinced myself that whoever she might be she was a young person whose habit was to do things.

“Catch!” she cried, and threw down the Hickory score-book.

She then superintended the unlading of the coach roof of its pile of brown and battered cricket bags, whilst the crowd pressed nearer to the wheels and evinced the liveliest concern as to “which is A. H.? And who’s the tall chap? And who’s the Parson? And don’t he look a funny little cuss? And who’s the very tall chap? ’Im wi’ the big ’ead? H. C. o’ course. And who’s the lamp-post? And that theer fleshy bloke who’d got three boys to carry his bag, a fourth to carry his hat, and a fifth his newspaper, must be Carteret, because it said in the Daily Chronicle that he was the fattest short-slip in England and took life easily.” Of such are fame’s penalties!

The young person in brown holland having made[40] it her business to see that the bags were bundled down with the necessary degree of violence, said: “I think you men had better go and change immediately. I’ll have a look at the wicket.”

She swung down from the step before any of the men below could lend a hand, and, while the whole eleven moved towards the pavilion with their luggage, the young person in brown holland made her way through the throng with the confidence of a duchess at a charity bazaar, and strode across the grass without the least suspicion of the Meredithian “swim.” And it was quite a coincidence that the Ancient and myself should choose a spot as near the wicket as the unwritten laws allowed, for the purpose of having a little practice.

The ground-man was lingering over the last touches to his masterpiece when the young person in brown holland actually set foot on the sacred earth that the general public is not even permitted to approach. The face of the ground-man was well worth looking at. When the feelings of a great artist are outraged it is a very painful sight. Alas, poor Wiggles! the agony of his countenance no pen could depict. He lifted up his head and emitted a slow-drawn growl. This had no effect whatever. Indeed, an instant later, this most audacious individual had the incredible effrontery to bring down[41] a pretty solid brown boot, by no means of the “little mice” type either, twice upon the pitch itself. It was more than a merely human ground-man could endure.

“Begging pardon, miss,” said he, “but are you aware, miss, that this here is a—a wicket?”

“Well, my dear man,” said the person thus addressed, “do you suppose I thought it was a bunker?”

The Ancient and I agreed that this was an achievement. For a member of the general public to retort effectually on a real live ground-man was as great a feat as to look at the Chinese Emperor. The face of Wiggles was a study. Meanwhile, the lady having sufficiently tried the adamantine surface with her boot, bent down and pressed on it with her thumb. A feather would have slain the miserable Wiggles at that moment. Was it possible that any human creature, let alone the sex, could presume to test, and criticise, and doubt his masterpiece in this way! But worse was coming. Apparently the young person in brown holland was determined to satisfy herself in regard to every detail.

“Ground-man,” she said, “has this turf any tendency to crumble?”

“No, it ain’t,” said the ground-man savagely.

Having laid her doubts in this direction, she[42] proceeded to view the wicket lengthwise. Setting her alert tanned face in a precise line with the stumps, she said:—

“Ground-man, are you sure that these sticks are quite plumb!”

“If they ain’t it’s the fust time i’ thirty yeer.”

“But surely the leg peg your end wants pulling out a bit. That’ll do. It’s all right now.”

When the utterly demoralised Wiggles discovered that he had unconsciously obeyed the behests of the young person in brown holland, I never saw a man who more regretted his own inability to kick himself.

“Well, ground-man,” she said slowly and reflectively, “I think this wicket is good enough for a Test Match. Here’s a shilling for you.”

The hesitation of Wiggles was really painful. A shilling is a shilling always, but how could a self-respecting ground-man accept one in these humiliating circumstances? His views on political economy, however, reconciled his outraged feelings to this added insult. He took the shilling with a defiant air.

“And, ground-man,” she said, “mind that I tip you for every individual century that is got for Hickory to-day.”

“Thank you kindly, miss,” said Wiggles, with a groan. He was Little Clumpton to the marrow.[43] The poor wretch cast a despairing glance at the Ancient and myself, while we practised in the most assiduous manner.

Suddenly a peal of laughter came from the young person in brown holland. It seemed that the sight-board in front of a dark fringe of trees behind the bowler’s arm had attracted her polite attention.

“Charlie’s arm’ll be over that,” she cried delightedly. “We’ll put him on that end.”

“Ancient,” said I, “do you hear what that—that girl’s saying? Why doesn’t that idiot Wiggles order her off the field? If she stops there much longer we’re a beaten team.”

Just then she turned her attention to us engaged in practice. Now the sight of this—this person who was so busily occupied in laying traps and pitfalls for Little Clumpton’s overthrow enraged me to that degree that I determined to get rid of her by uncompromising methods. She stood in the exact line of my crack to cover.

“Ancient,” I said, “just chuck up a nice half-volley on the off, and I’ll make this place a bit too hot for that young person in brown holland.”

The Ancient lost no time in becoming accessory before the fact, and, throwing my leg across, I put in every ounce I’d got.

[44]“Oh, goo—od stroke! goo—od stroke!” cried our intended victim in a very joyful voice. And we had the privilege of witnessing the young person we were conspiring to remove calmly place her feet and hands together, as per Steel and Lyttelton, and field and return that red-hot drive in the neatest, cleanest, county style.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said I.

“If she’s fielding cover for them,” said the Ancient grimly, “somebody’ll be run out. We’d better advise Lennox and Jack Comfort not to try to steal ’em. I shan’t go for short ’uns, I can tell you.”

The Ancient owed his eminence to the fact that no detail was too mean for his capacious mind. Besides, he was as strenuous, serious, and self-centred as a novelist with a circulation of a hundred thousand copies.

Much to the relief of Wiggles and ourselves, the sight of a perfect broad-shouldered giant of a fellow issuing from the pavilion at this moment, clad in flannels, bat in hand, lured the young person in brown holland from her very inconvenient and highly dangerous station at the wicket.

“Hi, Archie, got a ball?” she cried at the pitch of a splendid pair of lungs.

“Hullo, Grace!” replied the giant in a voice by no means the inferior of her own. “You’re just the[45] very chap. I want half a dozen down. Let’s cut across there to the nets. Here you are. Look out!”

Thereon the giant hurled a ball a terrific height into the eye of the sun. It seemed so perilously like descending on our heads that poor Wiggles put up his hands and began to run for his life. Not so the young person in brown holland. She stepped two or three yards backward, moved a little to one side, shaded her eyes a moment from the glare to sight the catch, and next instant had the leather tucked beautifully under her chin in a manner worthy of a G. J. Mordaunt.

“Wiggles,” said I, “do you happen to know who that lady is?”

“Wish I did, sir,” said Wiggles feebly. “She’s a terror, ain’t she? But I hope she don’t come here too often. I reckon she’s a Trentham, she is. That wor A. H. what just come out. Lord, and just look at that theer gal a bowlin’ at ’un. She sets ’un back on his sticks an’ all.”

We turned our attention to the nets, and beheld her bowling slow hanging length balls to A. H. Trentham, almost a facsimile of Alfred Shaw.

“I tell you, Dimsdale,” said the Ancient, “if this is what lovely woman’s coming to, it’s high time some of us crocks took to golf. I wonder if Miss Grace plays for M.C.C. I notice she’s got[46] their colours on. I’ve always contended that they never look so well as when worn by W. G., but I’m hanged if this new Grace don’t give the Old Man points.”

THE great men were now coming out in twos and threes to have a knock.

“Hullo!” said I, “that’s Elphinstone. Remember him at ‘the House.’ There’s not much of him, but what there is is all-sufficing. And just look at those great big bounding Trenthams. Anyone of ’em could put the little parson in his pocket. And I say, Ancient, do you notice that the young one, about the build of Townsend—I mean the one clapping his hands for the ball—do you notice that he’s an enlarged copy of the young person in brown holland? Same hair, and eyes, and nose, and everything; same cheerful enterprising look. It’s a million to a hay-seed she’s a Trentham, too.”

But the Optimist approached, an encyclopædia of the scientific and the useful.

“Brightside,” said the Ancient, “we want to know who that girl is who’s sticking up A. H. like Alfred Shaw.”

[48]“Better go and ask Lawson,” said the Optimist. “I’ve just suggested that he puts a placard up in the refreshment tent to the effect that the singularly interesting being in brown holland is Miss Laura Mary Trentham, yet another member of the world-famous cricket family of that name. Lawson’s being simply besieged with questions.”

“But A. H. called her Grace just now?”

“Her baptismal name is Laura Mary, but they call her Grace because she keeps five portraits of that hero on her bedroom mantelpiece. Rumour also says that she keeps strands of his beard stowed away in secret drawers. This she indignantly denies, however, as she swears that if she’d got them she’d wear them in a brooch.”

“H’m! And what an extraordinary resemblance there is between her and T. S. M.”

“They’re twins. She’s about an hour the older of the two, and I believe she bullies him outrageously. And I rather think she gives her honourable and reverend papa, and the remainder of the family, a pretty lively time. Why, here’s the old gentleman himself.”

The Captain and the Humourist were accompanying a fine old clergyman in an inspection of the wicket. He was gigantically built. His perfectly white hair lent him a venerable expression that was hardly borne out by his massive shoulders and[49] athletic figure, for they had not the faintest suspicion of age.

“By Jove!” said the Optimist in enthusiastic tones, “that old boy’s been a player in his day. In the fifties he practically beat the Players single-handed more than once. In fact, the old buffers say at Lord’s that for three years he was the best amateur bowler that there’s ever been. Of course wickets have altered since his time, but up at Lord’s they swear that Spofforth at his best was never in it with ‘the Reverent.’”

“’Don’t wonder then,” said I, “that this Clerk in Holy Orders has got such a devil of a family. Look out, mind your heads!”

Captain George, of the Artillery, had chosen that moment to open his shoulders to the youthful T. S. M. with the result that a lovely skimming drive dropped twenty yards in front of the pavilion and bounced with a rattle on to the corrugated iron roof. We had barely time to observe this when a buzz of amazement went round the crowded ring. It seemed that at last A. H., of Middlesex, had “had a go” at one of the insidious deliveries of Miss Grace, his sister, with the result that he lifted her from the far net clean over the ladies’ tent.

“Yes,” said the Ancient, “they appear to be a thoroughly amiable, courteous, carefully brought-up,[50] gentle-mannered family. There they go. It’s H. C.’s turn now. He’s very nearly killed a little boy. They seem to bowl like hell, and hit like kicking horses!”

This brought misfortune to us in hard reality. The General Nuisance strolled up with his permanent simper.

“Oldknow,” said he, “unwillingly I heard the profane utterance of your pagan mind. It is grievous for a man of your parts and understanding to give way to language of that character. But you will be glad to hear that our esteemed Secretary, Lawson, is suffering at this moment from an attack of incipient paralysis. It appears that that blackguard of a Billy is confined to bed.”

“The brute!”

“The beast!”

“The pig!”

“What I we are actually left to face a team like this with one bowler?” said I, the first to recover from the shock.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” said the General Nuisance, with his geniality rising almost to the point of hysteria. “We aren’t even left with one. As a matter of fact we haven’t a bowler of any sort. It’s true that we’ve any amount of the usual small change. I can bowl three long hops and[51] two full tosses in an over, so can you; so can all of us; and that, dear friends, is what we’ve got to do.”

“But you are forgetting Charlie,” said the Optimist of the lion heart.

“Oh dear, no,” said the General Nuisance, “’wouldn’t forget him for the world. If you would only wait and let me break the news with my usual delicacy. Charlie’s just wired to say that his mother-in-law has been taken seriously ill, and that he and Mrs. Charlie have been obliged to go to town.”

Straightway the Ancient wheeled about, and fled—fled with a curse into the recesses of the pavilion, far from the madding crowd, the pitiless sun, the perfect wicket, and those dreadful men from Hickory loosening their arms.

“Tha-ank you! Tha-ank you!” called the bowler, as a pretty little leg hit from J. P. Carteret struck the inoffensive Optimist between the shoulder-blades.

“Comfort,” said I, addressing myself to the General Nuisance, “if there had been the least sense of propriety in that rotten played-out thing called Providence, that ball had hit you on the head.”

“Dear friends,” said the General Nuisance, “don’t you think that Charlie’s mother-in-law well maintains the traditions of her tribe?”

[52]“The abandoned old woman!” cried I.

“Never mind, I think it’s our turn to win the toss,” said the Optimist, unconquered still.

They ought to grant the Victoria Cross to men of this heroic mould, who remain wholly invincible to circumstance. Some credit was due to me as well, for I had the presence of mind to behave as custom, nay, etiquette, demands, when things are going wrong. I broke out into loud and prolonged abuse of the harmless necessary Secretary.

“Lawson is an utter and consummate ass!” said I. “A man with the intelligence of an owl would surely know that his bowlers were bound to let him down at the eleventh hour. They always do. They always consult their own book before they think about their side. I shall suggest at the next meeting of committee that Lawson be asked to resign. Nature never designed a fool to be a secretary; besides, one looks for foresight in a secretary. Here he’s actually not made the least provision for a case of this sort, which a man with the penetration of the common hedgehog would have anticipated at the beginning of the season. And, Comfort, what’s he doing now? Surely he knows that Middlesex aren’t playing, and of course he’s had the sense to wire for Hearne and Albert Trott.”

[53]“No, I believe not,” drawled the General Nuisance; “but we must give credit, my dear Dimsdale, where credit’s due, for even that submerged Secretary of ours has, impossible as it may appear, gone one better than even your intelligence suggests. He’s just cabled to Australia for Jones and Trumble. They’re not so well known to the Hickory cracks as Jack Hearne and Trott; besides, they’ve been resting all the winter, don’t you know.”

Here the pavilion bell pealed lustily as a signal for the ground to clear immediately, it being now within a few minutes of eleven o’clock. It was a real relief that our conversation with the General Nuisance had at length been interrupted, since I for one could feel a quantity of awful consequences fairly itching in my finger-tips. If nature had not a habit of going out of its way to encourage original sin in all its phases, the General Nuisance must have died with a jerk at a comparatively early period of his development.

The summons was promptly obeyed. The players came trooping in from the remote corners of the playing-piece; and it was observed that while Hickory walked confident, lusty, and obtrusively cheerful, Little Clumpton were in that state of nerves when strong men pluck at their moustaches and their ties. When we entered[54] the dressing-room we found the Captain and the Secretary conferring together in tragic whispers. This in itself was sufficient to strike a chill into the boldest heart; and we stood apart out of pure respect and appreciation for the solemn sight. Presently the Captain rose, and a shudder went through us all, for we saw by his intense expression that he was going out to toss. And we remembered that the Captain was the unluckiest man in England with the spin; that he had won the toss against Hickory last year; that our so-called bowling was absolutely unworthy of the name; that the wicket was perfection; and that the finest batting side that had ever appeared for Hickory was drinking stone-ginger beer and cracking rude jokes in their dressing-room across the way.

Alas, no jokes and ginger beer for Little Clumpton! Even the Humourist forbore to make a pun; the Optimist was silent as the tomb; and two large-hearted persons sat on the face of the General Nuisance, partly in the public interest, and partly that manslaughter might be averted for a time. When the Captain, pale but stern, went forth to toss, the Worry tottered from his seat and softly closed the door. We had no desire for publicity. As for the preliminaries and suspense of the sacred rite itself, in that direction madness lay. The Pessimist alone dared to interrupt the holy[55] peace that pervaded this dull and miserable dressing-room; but he was a man without any of life’s little delicacies, and utterly devoid of the higher instincts and the finer feelings.

“I say, you men,” said he, “we might be a set of Hooligans riding to the assizes in Black Maria to make the acquaintance of Mr. Justice Day. Why doesn’t somebody smile? Suppose you try, Brightside, as you’re always such a jolly cheerful sort o’ Johnny.”

“Shut up,” said the Secretary, “if you desire to avoid what’s happened to that blasted Comfort!”

This pointed reference appeared to touch the General Nuisance in his amour propre, for after a violent struggle he was able to sufficiently disengage his mouth from the vertebral columns of his guardians to painfully suggest:—

“S’pose I give—compliments—club—to—Grace Trentham and ask her to come and—bowl a bit—for Lil Clumpton. She can—give such—a long start—to—the refuse we’ve——”

Here, however, his custodians, by half garrotting him, and the judicious application of Merryweather’s “barn door,” were able to get their refractory charge in hand again.

And now the door opened softly, and the Captain stalked in, saying nothing. The fell deed was[56] accomplished. Yet who was going in, not one of us knew, and not one of us had the courage to inquire. Those inscrutable eyes and that high expansive brow were as impassive as the Sphinx. Not a muscle twitched, not a line relented in the Captain’s face, and not a man of us dared frame the ingenuously simple question:—

“Halliday, have you won the toss?”

We noted the Captain’s smallest movements now with wild-eyed anxiety. We saw him wash his hands, we saw him part his hair, and when he said: “Chuck me that towel, Lennox,” in sepulchral tones, his voice startled us like an eighty-one ton gun. Then he proceeded to divest himself of his blazer. “We are fielding!” flashed through our inner consciousness; but—but he might be going in first. He rolled his sleeves up with horrible deliberation. Oh, why had not that wretched Lawson, miserable Secretary as he was, the pluck to say: “Halliday, have you won the toss?” Surely it was the Secretary’s place to do this, else what was the good of having a Secretary if he couldn’t ask the Captain who was going in, and simple things of that sort?

The Captain hung his blazer up reflectively on one of the pegs of his locker; he foraged in his cricket bag; he drew forth a pair of pads. “He’s taking wicket!” was the thought that made our[57] flesh creep, since he had been known to undertake these thankless duties on very great occasions. But—but he might be going in first. And at least he might have had the common humanity to put us out of our misery. He had buckled on one pad, and was carefully folding his trousers round his ankle prior to adjusting the second, when he looked up sadly and addressed me familiarly by name.

“Dimsdale,” he said slowly and meekly, “have you any very rooted disinclination to going in first with me?”

The Secretary jumped up and literally fell upon the Captain’s neck. The General Nuisance was immediately released. The Optimist and the Pessimist were as brothers, identified in joy. The Worry amused himself in a quiet way by turning cart-wheels across the floor. Indeed, it was a moment when life was very good.

Now the honour was so stupendous that had been conferred upon me, that it was more than a young and ambitious man with his name to make could realize at first. It was beyond my most highly-tinted dreams that I should be singled out to go in first with the Captain in my first Little Clumpton v. Hickory. Why should I, of all the talented men our team possessed, be chosen for this distinction? Was there not the Humourist, with his dauntless “never-saw-such-bowling-in-my-life[58] air”; the Pessimist, who had played for the county twice this season; the Ancient, with all the weight of his accumulated wisdom, his guile, and his experience; the Worry, who if allowed to stay ten minutes, neither men nor angels could remove; the General Nuisance, too, who must have been an almost superhuman bat to be allowed to play at all? It was a moment of my life when I said with all becoming modesty: “Thanks, old chap,” and proceeded to put on my pads with hands that trembled.

“First wicket, Ancient,” said the Captain, writing down the order. It was wonderful how merry the room had suddenly become: the buzz of tongues, the whistling of the music of the music hall, the Humourist working at his pun, the General Nuisance veiling his satisfaction in gin and ginger beer, all testified that cricket was a noble sport, and that life was really excellent.

“I say, you men,” said the Captain, “remember that our game’s to keep in. No risks, mind; no hurry for runs, you know. We haven’t got a bit of bowling, and somebody’s told ’em so.”

I was in the act of testing the handle of my bat, when I recollected with a pang that I was minus my Authentics. What should I do? William had not appeared with its substitute, yet in a couple of minutes I should be going in to bat on perhaps the[59] biggest occasion of my career. Heaven knew I was horribly nervous as it was, so nervous, that when I thought of marching out to that wicket, before that crowd, to face that bowling, I began to desire a gentle death and a quiet funeral. It was now five minutes past eleven, and still that confounded William had not come! What should I do? The more I thought of the Magdalen, the Winchester, and the M.C.C., the more impossible they became.

“Ready?” said the Captain.

“Ye—es,” said I; “q—quite ready.”

“Hickory aren’t out yet,” said the kind-hearted Optimist, looking through the window.

“’Wonder why they don’t hurry,” said the General Nuisance; “I can see that Dimsdale’s positively trembling to get at ’em. Besides, the umpires have been out quite five minutes.”

“They’re funking us,” said the Humourist.

Ah, these humourists, what lion hearts they’ve got!

“Perhaps they are being photographed,” some enlightened mind suggested.

The Worry opened the door, although I vainly assured him that there really was no hurry, to have a look at what Hickory were up to.

“Why,” said he breathlessly, “they’re playing two wicket-keepers.”

[60]Sure enough, two men with pads on stood conversing in the doorway of their dressing-room, and looking across at us.

“’Never heard of such a thing before,” said the Secretary, with a puzzled air, “as a side having two wicket-keepers. H.C. must be a blooming hurricane. But I’m not quite sure whether this is altogether legal. Who’s got a copy of the rules?”

“Why, what are you fellows up to?” demanded Captain George from the other side, gazing earnestly at Halliday’s pads and mine.

“The very thing I want to ask you,” said Halliday.

“We’re waiting for you to take the field,” said Trentham; “the umpires have been out some time.”

“We are quite ready when you are,” said Halliday.

“We’ve been ready the last five minutes.”

“Then why don’t you go out?”

“How can we go out until you are in the field?”

The position of Halliday’s jaw announced that he was completely at a loss.

“Anyway,” said he, “what are Elphinstone and Archie doing with their pads on?”

“We want to know why you two have got yours on?”

[61]“I told you we should go in,” said our Captain.

“But I said that we should,” said theirs.

“But I thought you were joking.”

“And I thought you were.”

“But I won the toss.”

“Pardon me, Halliday, but I won the toss.”

“Pardon me, Trentham, but you are quite wrong.”

“My dear Halliday, this is absurd!”

“Well, who called?”

“Hanged if I know; but I know I won the toss. But who did call?”

“I don’t know; but I’m certain that I won the toss.”

A howl of laughter broke from the light-minded persons in the other room. But on our part we preserved a very religious gravity, I can assure you. The dismay that had seized the whole team was terrible to contemplate.

“Well, who saw us toss?” said their Captain confidently.

“Yes; who saw us toss?” said ours, with an equally full-toned conviction.

Yet, unhappily or happily, sure I know not which, neither side could produce a single witness.[C]

[62]What was to be done? The crowd was growing highly impatient, and cries of “Play up!” assailed us as we stood and argued.

“I don’t think there’s anything in the rules that provides for both sides going in to bat,” drawled the General Nuisance; “therefore, suppose we send in a man, you send in a man; you have a bowler on at one end, we have one on at the other, and all field? That practically obviates the difficulty, doesn’t it? And it’ll be ever so much nicer for everybody.”

Though this solution was hailed by us as the height of ingenuity, and “nice” to the last degree, singularly enough Hickory were blind to its beauties. Therefore when our Captain said, “We’d better toss again, hadn’t we?” it struck George Trentham that this was a rather good idea.

This time, that there might be no mistake, both sides crowded round their irresponsible skippers. Hickory had a tendency to view the thing as the finest joke they’d ever heard, but Little Clumpton to a man wore a funereal gravity. Trentham produced a coin, and sent it spinning to the ceiling.

“Tails!” cried our Captain.

The coin dropped on the wooden boards of the[63] pavilion, and proceeded to run round on its edges, as though enjoying the proceedings thoroughly, whilst several enterprising men ran round after it.

“Tails it is!” said Lawson, who always arrived just a short head before everybody else.

“Then I think,” said our Captain, with a most statesmanlike deliberation, “all things considered, we shall be justified in going in.”

A minute later Hickory streamed into the field, and were greeted with great cheering. And as they issued forth the breathless William appeared with Thornhill’s cap, just in the nick of time.

HAD I been in less of a tottering funk, I might have taken the admirably timed arrival of the Authentics as an omen of good luck. But I was in that suicidal frame of mind when a man wishes that he is anything but what he is, anywhere but where he is, and that he has to do aught but what he has to do. It is a frame of mind that can give for deep-seated torture a long start to nightmares, weddings, sea-sickness, and public speaking. If I were only going in first wicket, I shouldn’t care! If I’d only an inkling of what the bowling was like! If only it wasn’t Little Clumpton v. Hickory! If only the crowd wasn’t so beastly big and demonstrative! If only it wasn’t such a glaring hot day! If only this abject cap was not two sizes too small! If it was only my own, and it didn’t look and feel so supremely ridiculous! If I could only cut away to a prompt and very private death! Cricket is quite a gentle,[65] harmless game, but he is a lucky man who has not to sweat some blood before he’s done with it.

“Ready, Dimsdale?” said the Captain.

I followed him sickly, fumbling at my batting-glove with nervous fingers.

“Wish you luck, old man,” said some person of benevolent disposition, as I issued forth. It is never exactly kind, however, to wish luck to the keenly sensitive, as it leads them to think that they’ll certainly need luck, and plenty of it, if they’re going to stay long. From the Artistic Standpoint (capital letters, please, Mr. Printer!), it is a thousand pities that I cannot say that when I stepped from the pavilion on this great occasion to open the innings with my Captain, a man whose name had penetrated to the remotest corners of the cricket world, I held my head up with an air of conscious power. Why was I not, as the Hero of this story, prepared to do the thing in style, in the manner of the most accepted writers? Of course I ought to have marched to the wicket, my heart big with courage, calm in the knowledge that the Hero never does get less than fifty. I ought to have been ready to chastise Villainy in the person of the Demon Bowler, by hitting his length balls for six on the slightest provocation. I am sure that no less than this is expected of me by every right-minded reader. Nor am I blind by any means to my[66] obligations; yet somehow it is so much easier to get runs with the pen than with the bat. At least I have always found it so!

I daresay that, except for being a trifle pale, I looked quite happy to all but the trained observer. I don’t suppose that ten persons of the shouting thousands present had the faintest notion that the trim-built chap of medium height who walked in with H. J. Halliday, his bat tucked beneath his arm, as he fastened on his glove, had limbs of paper and a heart of fear. There was nought to indicate that there was a dreadful buzzing in his ears, a black mist before his eyes, that his knee-joints were threatening to let him down at every step, and that he was praying to be bowled first ball, to be put out of his misery at once.

When you go in to bat, it is not that you dread aught special and particular. You would cheerfully endure anything rather than your present ordeals. You are not afraid of getting a “duck.” On the contrary, you’ll be almost happy if you get one. It is the mere sensation of an impending something, you know not what, that plays skittles with your impressionable nature.

“’Mind taking first ball, Halliday?” I said hoarsely.

“If you like,” said he; then added, “Just play your usual, and you’re bound to get ’em.”

[67]True cricketers are the soul of kindness.

Carefully noting at which end the wicket-keeper was, I just as carefully went to the one at which he was not. The mighty H. C. Trentham was loosening his arm, and sending down a few preliminaries. I watched him as keenly as the black mists before my eyes allowed. He brought his long brown arm right over with a beautiful, easy, automatic swing. The ball slipped from his fingers at an ordinary pace, but as soon as it took the ground it spun off the pitch with an inward twist at three times the rate one would expect. He looked every inch a bowler, powerfully built in every part, his body supple as a cat’s, a remarkable length of limb, and, better still, a pair of extremely strong and heavy-timbered legs.

However, the man preparing to resist him looked every inch a batsman, too. Lithe, alert, calm, he seemed quietly happy that he had got to face a bowler worthy of his artifice. The manner in which he asked for his guard, and took it, the elaborate process he went through to ensure the maintenance of “two leg,” the diligent way in which he observed the placing of the field, and the freedom with which he ordered the screen about, all pointed to the conclusion that if Hickory got him out for under fifty on that wicket, they would be able to congratulate themselves. There is as[68] much difference between the first-class cricketer and the ordinary club-man as there is between a professional actor and the gifted amateur. The club-man may be a marvel of conscientiousness, discretion, and enthusiasm, and able to recite Steel and Lyttelton from the preface to the index at a moment’s notice, but he has not that air of inevitableness that emphasizes the county man scoring off the best of Briggs and Richardson, and apparently able to compass any feat in the batting line but the losing of his wicket.

The terrific H. C. Trentham was now ready to deal destruction. Anxiously had I observed the placing of the field, the most noticeable items of which were the wicket-keeper standing a dozen yards behind the sticks, and the four men in the slips still deeper, with their hands on their thighs, and their noses on a level with the bails. The bowler measured his distance, and scratched up the turf at his starting-point. The batsman set himself. The bowler walked a couple of yards, then broke into a trot, that gradually grew into a run, and when he arrived at the crease, with the velocity of a locomotive he hurled the ball from his hand, and his body after it, almost faster than the eye could follow. The Captain fairly dug his bat into his block-hole, and the ball came back straight down the pitch, whizzing and rotating in half-circles.[69] It was a most determined and barefaced attempt to “york” the captain, and the bowler smiled all over his countenance in a very winning manner. The Captain set himself again. The next ball was of perfect length, a few inches on the off, and turned in suddenly, with the ungenerous idea of hitting the top of the off stump; but the Captain, watching it all the way, met it very warily, his right leg well against his bat, and blocked it gently back again to the bowler. The third had a very similar design, but happening to be pitched a little farther up, it came back as though propelled from a gun. The bowler neatly picked it up one hand, and drew the first cheer from the crowd. The fourth was full of guile. It was a trifle on the short side, wide of the off stump, and instead of turning in, was going away with the bowler’s arm. The Captain drew himself erect, held up his bat, and never made the least attempt to play it. The bowler smiled more winningly than ever. A London critic unburdened his mind by shouting “Nottingham!” The fifth was wickedness itself. The bowler covered his fifteen yards of run with exactly the same action and velocity, hurled down the ball with the same frantic effort of arms and body, but, behold, the ball was as slow as possible, and the eye could distinctly follow it as it spun in the air with a palpable leg-bias. Even the great batsman who had to receive[70] it was at fault. He played a little bit too soon, but, happily for Little Clumpton, the ground was so hard and true that it refused to take the full amount of work, and instead of its curling in and taking the Captain’s middle, as the bowler had intended, it refused to come in farther than the leg stick, which was conscientiously covered by the Captain’s pad. There it hit him, and rolled slowly towards the umpire, whilst the wicket-keeper pelted grotesquely after it.

“Come on!” I cried, seizing the opportunity, for I was very, very anxious for the Captain to take first over from the other end. Accordingly, we scuttled down the pitch, and I got home just as the wicket-keeper threw down my citadel.

“Well bowled, Charlie!” said the Captain. But I think there was more in this than may appear, as I believe the thoughtful Captain wished to attract my careful attention to that particular ball. Meantime the bowler had been grinning so violently at his own exceeding subtlety that mid-off politely requested him not to commit such an outrage on the handiwork of nature.

“Tom, you have a try that end,” said Captain George, throwing the ball to T. S. M. “Set the field where you want ’em.”

“Left-hand round the wicket!” the umpire announced to the batsman; “covers ’em both, sir.”

[71]It was plain, by the irregular arrangement of the field, which had three men out, that T. S. M. was slow.

“You don’t want a third man; send him out into the country, and bring point round a bit!”

Now as these commands were issued most distinctly from the top of the coach, and as Miss Grace Trentham was at that moment the sole occupant of the same, she must be held responsible for them. A wide smile flickered in the face of every fielder, including that of the happy-go-lucky Hickory captain. But let it be observed, in passing, that there are captains to whom this advice, however Pallas-like, would not appear “good form.” It was evident that Miss Grace knew her man.

“By Jove! she’s right,” said the good-humoured soldier; “get round, Jimmy.”

“She always is,” said the Harrow captain, her youngest brother; “and I wish she wasn’t. She knows a jolly sight too much.”

“Why don’t she qualify for Kent,” said J. P. Carteret, as he waddled off to deep square-leg.

The Harrow boy began with a singular sort of movement that must have had a resemblance to the war-dance of the cheerful Sioux, or the festive Shoshanee, which developed into a corkscrew kind of action that was very puzzling to watch, and imparted to the ball a peculiar and deceptive flight.[72] He was quite slow, with a certain amount of spin and curl. The Captain played right back to him every time, and, like the old Parliamentary hand he was, there was very little of his wicket to be seen, as his legs did their best to efface it. The Captain had come in with the determination to take no liberties. He meant to play himself thoroughly well in before turning his attention to the secondary matter of making runs. If T. S. M. had been a Peate, his first over could not have been treated with a more flattering respect. The consequence was that he opened with a maiden also.

My turn had now arrived. I was called on to face the finest amateur bowler in England. Judging by the one over of his that I had had the privilege of witnessing, he appeared to combine the pace of a Kortright with the wiles of a Spofforth. Taking him altogether, he did not seem to be the nicest bowler in the world for a man of small experience and ordinary ability to oppose. But I remembered vaguely that the wicket was perfection, and that a straight bat would take a lot of beating. Besides, the black mists had lifted somewhat from my eyes, and the beastly funk had considerably decreased, as it often does when one is actually at work. All the same, I took my guard without knowing exactly what I did; I observed the field without knowing precisely how it was[73] arranged, yet could see enough of it to be aware that point was looking particularly grim, and half inclined to chuckle, as though saying to himself, “Oh, he’s a young ’un, is he?”

It was perhaps the sardonic countenance of point that stirred the old Adam in me, for suddenly I took heart of grace, recollected the Captain’s “Play your usual, and you’re bound to get ’em,” and made up my mind to play out at H. C. Trentham as though my life depended on it. All the same, I could have wished that the cap I wore was my own, and not two sizes smaller than it should be, and that I could divest my brain of Miss Grace’s sinister remark anent Charlie’s arm getting over the screen, at the end at which (doubtless at her suggestion) he had gone on to bowl. Besides, he was grinning in a way that, though surely very self-satisfied and ridiculous, was disconcerting to a high degree. I certainly think that if in the umpire’s opinion a bowler takes too great liberties with his face at any period of his delivery of the ball, the said umpire should be empowered to “no-ball” the said bowler. Probably the counties will petition M.C.C.

I planted my right foot on the edge of the crease with mathematical care, and set myself to meet the best bowler at either ’Varsity since Sammy Woods. My straining eyes never left him for an instant as he picked the ball up, worked his thumb[74] up and down the seam, rubbed it on the ground, and then walked jauntily to his starting-point. I could see him all the way; the beautiful clear sunlight, the bright new red ball, and my own intentness almost enabled me to read the maker’s name on the cover as he held it in his hand whilst he walked, trotted, galloped to the crease. As he brought his arm high over his head, despite the cessation of the screen’s assistance, I could see the thumb and two fingers in which he grasped the ball and every bit of his powerful wrist work. I had no time to think or to know where the ball was, however. But as it came humming from his hand instinct said, “Go forward hard!” and forward I went, leg, bat, and elbow, for all that I was worth. There was a delicious vibration that told me the ball was timed to the second full in the middle of the bat. It flew like a streak to mid-off all along the carpet; but mid-off happened to be a county man, and it was back in the bowler’s hands and threatening the Captain’s wicket just as “No!” had left my mouth. And there was a personal compliment implied in the blinking eyes of H. C. Trentham and the benevolent smile of H. J. Halliday that was a recompense for all the pains I was enduring and many hours of “duck”-requited toil. I was conscious of an elated thrill running through my fibres as I awaited number[75] two. Again I watched it eagerly as it came spinning through the sunlight and humming like a top; again I could not say exactly where it was, but out went bat, and leg, and elbow as before, and mid-off was afforded another opportunity for the exhibition of his skill. I set myself defiantly for number three. Let H.C. Trentham bowl his heart out. The third came along humming, and whizzing, and spinning in the manner of the other two, but I had a vague sort of idea that it was a little wider and a little farther up. It was faster than an express train, but it merely appeared to delicately kiss the middle of the bat in the gentlest, sweetest way.

“Oh, well hit!” came the voice of the Captain down the wicket. The crowd broke into a roar, and in a perfect ecstasy I looked into what I guessed should be the direction of the ball. Behold! there was cover-point on the verge of the boundary waiting whilst a spectator officiously returned it. It was merely the force of habit that was responsible for that fourer, but the sensation of pure rapture was incomparable. As there is nothing in the whole range of poetry or prose with which to point a parallel, it must be allowed that beside a perfectly-timed boundary hit, on a hard ground, from fast bowling, all other delights of this life are as nothingness.

[76]The fourth ball came along in much the same way as the third, yet was appreciably shorter and slower. I left it severely alone. The fifth was a regular uprooting yorker, but I got my bat down in time and chopped it away. So much for the crack’s first over. I had broken my duck in the most handsome manner; I could see the ball; I was beginning to feel alarmingly happy; I never felt so fit and so much like making runs. And I had only to continue as I’d started to be sure of a trial for the county next week against Somerset. But I must restrain my eagerness, play steady, and keep cool.

The Captain adopted the same tactics of masterly inactivity in regard to the second over of the youthful T.S.M. He was quite an ordinary club bowler compared to his great brother at the other end. A shortish one was hooked quietly round to leg for a single, and it was my turn to meet him. There was not a hint of my previous vacillation in the way I took my guard. The buzzing in my head had altogether gone; my eye was as clear and keen as possible. I had had my baptism of fire already. This was very common stuff; indeed, so much so that I took the liberty of turning the second ball I had of it to leg for three.

It being the last ball of the over, I had again[77] to face H. C. With a bowler of his quality it requires a man of very great inexperience to be quite at ease or to think of attempting liberties. Therefore, again I concentrated the whole of my attention on every ball; and the billiard-table pitch and a straight, unflinching bat enabled me to cope with his second over. It was a maiden, but it called for brilliancy on the part of mid-off, and a magnificent bit of fielding by Carteret in the slips, who saved a keen late cut from being a boundary to make it one. Each ball was timed to the instant; my wrists and the rare old blade with the wrapping at the bottom seemed to be endowed with magic; the sun was just in the right place; I had forgotten all about my cap, the screen, the might of the attack—forgotten everything but the joy of achievement, so supreme was the sense of making runs with certainty and ease from county bowling, in the presence of an appreciative crowd, on a great occasion. Here was Elysium. It was a sufficient recompense for a hundred failures. If I kept playing this game I couldn’t help but get ’em. Fifty was assured, perhaps; who knew——? But no man can be sanguine in regard to his first century. That is a bourn that few travellers ever reach.

The Captain played T. S. M. gently for another single. I trotted down blithely to the other end.[78] He was still bowling his slow leg-breaks, but it would be folly to attempt to drive him, as his flight was so deceptive; besides, he had three men out. One ball which he delivered a full two yards behind the crease was tossed up so high that it was difficult to resist, as it appeared to be almost a half-volley at first sight. It actually dropped shorter than his others, however. This was the ball with which he usually got his wickets; and although, crude as it was, it might do well enough for schoolboys, it was to be hoped that he didn’t expect a man who intended to appear next week for his county to fall a victim to it! If he did, he would very probably be disappointed. The feel of that three to leg was still lingering in my wrist, and I was certain that this stroke could be played with impunity on this wicket. Besides, it would show the Captain at the other end that I was by no means content to follow his lead, but had resources of my own. Again, if I persevered in getting T. S. M. away to leg, he would be certain to pitch them up a bit, and if he could only be persuaded to do that, sure as fate I should go out to him and lift him clean over the ring! It wasn’t such a very big hit; besides, I felt capable of doing anything with ordinary club bowling. Really, I never felt so fit, and on such excellent terms with everybody and everything! When I received the[79] first ball of T. S. M.’s next over I had a plan of the positions of the on-side fielders in the corner of my eye. But it was such an excellent length that I had to play defensively. To my infinite pleasure, I immediately saw that the second was his usual shortish one. I promptly prepared to help myself to another three, stepped into my wicket so to do, but was so anxious to seize my opportunity that I had not troubled to note exactly how short it was. Therefore it rose a little higher than I expected, and I was also a little bit too soon. It hit me just above the pad with an almost caressing gentleness.

“How was that?” said the bowler, turning round to the umpire.

This didn’t bother me in the least. I merely felt a trifle annoyed that my ardour had caused me to let off so bad a ball. But my pleasant meditations were suddenly disturbed by adjacent voices,—

“Chuckerrupp!”

It never entered my head that I could be out by any possibility. The ball was a very vulgar long hop. I looked at the umpire with an air of bewilderment. He had a stolid solemnity that was funereal. I saw his hand go up. Thereon, with the blood buzzing into my ears, I made tracks for the pavilion. All the way I went I could not realize that I was out. My only sensation was the not unpleasing one of walking swiftly. Dead[80] silence reigned as I marched in head down, thinking of nothing in particular. But the vision of the umpire’s upthrown hand seemed to be painted on my retina.

The Ancient was in the dressing-room brandishing his bat.

“Rough luck, old man!” he said.

Thereupon he went out to take my vacant place at the wicket, while I sat down, slowly mopped my wet face, rinsed my parched mouth, and then proceeded to take my pads off in the dullest, most apathetic manner.

I  WAS still seated, striving to break to myself the news that I really must be out, and that my brave dreams were as dust, when the man I least desired to see—the General Nuisance—appeared with his condolence. He placed a shilling in my hand with an air of indescribable tenderness.

“What’s this for?” I said.

“For your cricket outfit,” said he. “I knew that you’d wish to dispose of it at once by private treaty, as you’ll never touch a bat again if you live to be a hundred. A shilling for the lot, and a pretty liberal offer.”

When I slowly raised my face and looked at the General Nuisance, there was that within it which caused him to somewhat hurriedly remember that he had “got to see a man about a dog,” and he, therefore, could not possibly stay just then to discuss the details. The utterly abandoned appear to enjoy a charmed existence. It was the same[82] at the wicket. I’ve seen the General Nuisance dropped more times in one afternoon than men who have had their moral natures properly developed are in the course of a season.

Having convinced myself at last that I was actually out, I got up and donned my blazer with an assumption of sad-eyed resignation. A case of l.b.w. offers no scope for original and forcible combinations of phrase; it has exhausted them quite a long time ago. Thus I filled a pipe, and began pathetically to smoke. If it were not that the gods gave tobacco to us to assuage our miseries, it is certain that common humanity would insist on a lethal chamber being attached to the pavilion of every cricket-ground, whereby poor mortals placed as I was now might not continue in their sufferings.

I eventually went out and sat down with as much dignity as I could assume on the pavilion front. There, staring me in the face, was the grim legend, 10-1-7. Presently I found the courage to look at the game. But it reminded me too acutely of the horrid void left gaping in my young ambition. How I could see the ball, and how absurdly simple did the bowling look! It always does when you’ve been in and got out for a few. If you’ve been in and made a score, it is usual to advise your successors to play a watchful game, as[83] the bowling is by no means so easy as it seems. Why didn’t the Ancient cut that ball for four, instead of pecking at it? Why didn’t the Captain jump into those ridiculous donkey-drops and hit ’em to the moon, instead of playing back and contenting himself with singles? It was this pottering, afternoon-tea kind of cricket that was ruining the game.

The team agreed that they had never seen me shape so well. But what solace is it to be told this when one is out for seven? Here was I fitness incarnate, timing and seeing the ball to a hair, condemned to sit hours on the hard seat of that pavilion, eating my heart out with inactivity, while others got ’em. Verily cricket is a cheerful pastime! The perfect wicket, the glorious day, the appreciative crowd, the chance of fame, and then l.b.w. 7.

“Of course, the ball did a lot,” said the Pessimist. “’Wouldn’t have hit the wicket by a mile. Your leg couldn’t possibly have been in front, and, of course in your humble opinion the blithering umpire is either drunk or delirious.”

“Grimston,” said the Humourist, “you appear to suffer from a deficient sympathy. It is very unkind of you to make remarks of this sort, when you can see that the poor fellow is in pain. It is not humour and it is not humanity.”

[84]There was no alternative but to continue smoking with that placid indifference that alone can cope with the vulgar, common wit that is levelled at ourselves.

“Look at Brightside, lucky brute!” said the Secretary, “jawing on the coach there with Miss Grace. Keeps her all to himself, the selfish beggar! instead of coming down and introducing us.”

The Optimist appeared to be having a particularly happy time. He was seated beside Miss Grace on the box-seat, talking in the most animated manner, whilst she put down the runs in the Hickory score-book, which she held on her knee. It is impossible to assess the exact amount of envy he provoked in the susceptible bosoms of his side seated on the pavilion front.

We were still discussing the good fortune of the Optimist, and watching him pursue it, when he climbed down from his conspicuous position and came along towards eight of his flannel-clad colleagues, who had a terrible quantity of inflammable material in their manly interiors.

“’Do believe he’s coming for us,” said the quick-eyed Secretary. “S’pose he takes the bally team?”

“Isn’t it a good thing we’re so good-looking?” said the Humourist.

“I really can’t help my personal appearance,” said the General Nuisance, with a simper.

[85]“Soap might,” I said coarsely. But my temperature was very low.

The answer of the General Nuisance was very properly taking the form of a naked fist; and I, on my part, was just proposing to test the staying powers of his singularly beautiful aquiline nose, when the Optimist arrived and lifted up his voice.

“Dimsdale,” said he importantly, “Grace Trentham wants to see you. She thinks your batting’s prime. ’Says the way you stood up to Charlie the perfection of style and confidence. No end of a critic, I can tell you. ’Says your crack to cover’s test thing she’s seen in that line since Lionel Palairet’s off-drive. In fact, my son, I rather think if you’ll come and be presented to her you won’t be so very sorry. She wants to see you awfully.”

The Optimist really was a very delightful person. He spoke loud enough for all the team to hear. Nor was he content to make a bald announcement of my honours, but managed to embroider them with an art that soured the uninvited for an hour. It was remarkable how promptly the whole team became occupied with other things. The Ancient fluked H. C. wretchedly through the slips for three.

“Run it out!” they yelled, as though the match depended on it. “Go on, Ancient! Get back, Jack! Oh, well run! Well run!”

[86]“Come on, Dimsdale,” said the Optimist, the moment this riot subsided. “Let us get away from these nasty, noisy cricketers, and go into more refined society.”

“Have you noticed,” said the Pessimist to the Treasurer, “how some men are never content unless they are sitting beside something that’s got a frock on? Never saw the fun myself in uttering bland lies to insipid schoolgirls, to estimate the amount of music in their ‘ohs’ and ‘reallys!’”

“Mind you men bat your very best,” said the Optimist, as we departed, “then perhaps Grace Trentham’ll send for some of you. Never know your luck, you know, do you?”

“How gaudy!” growled the Secretary. “Great encouragement to get runs.”

I felt this to be a moment of my middling unilluminated life. But to show the Goddess that Nature had designed me to support her favours with due dignity, and, therefore, that her confidence in me was not in the least degree misplaced, I strove to walk modestly in my public decorations. As we went to the coach the pent-up enthusiasm of the Optimist broke forth.

“Tell you what, old chap,” he said, “she’s quite the jolliest girl I know. One of the sort you read about, you know. No end of a fine girl, I can tell[87] you. Not a bit o’ side and small talk, and Society manner, and that sort o’ rot. Awfully good people too, the Trenthams. By Jove! old chap, if I could only bat like you! If I’d only got your confidence, and your nerve, and your wrist!”

“It’s awfully good of you, old man,” I said, with a touch of complacency, I fear, “to bring me along and give me a show, when you might have kept her all to yourself.”

“Not at all,” said he. “Sent me to fetch you, you know. Besides, you sat there looking so deuced chippy that it struck us that you ought to be made to buck up a bit.”

“H’m! Ah! yes!” I murmured.

The Optimist was one of the hopelessly good sorts of the world, but he never did know when to leave off. He should have remembered that a woman’s admiration is one thing, but that her pity is quite another. But, then again, how like the good old Optimist to neglect his own opportunities! He was not altogether blind to that side of the question, though, since he said feelingly,—

“She says that Elphinstone and Carteret are staying at the Rectory with her father.”

“Well,” said I, with the brutal directness of the average man, “Carteret happens to be married, and I saw in the World last week that Elphinstone’s just got engaged.”

[88]“That a fact!” he cried, with a fervour that gave him away.

I regret to say that I laughed to myself in a cynical manner.

“Grace, this is Mr. Dimsdale, whom you saw batting just now,” said the Optimist, as we halted under the drag. “Dimsdale, Miss Trentham, whose brother got you leg before.”

“Awful fluke it was, too,” said the coach’s fair occupant frankly, in the act of bowing; and then added, “How do you? Won’t you come up? Heaps of room, and you’ll see ever so much better.”

As she looked down at us, and we looked up at her, I discovered with alarming suddenness that Miss Grace Trentham had a pair of eyes of remarkable beauty, large and clear, and very blue, indeed, with long dark lashes drooping on her cheeks. She had also the colouring that one only sees in the English girl grown in the open air. In itself it was a pastoral, as sweet as a mown hayfield in a sunny June. It was of the purest light brown, not quite dark enough for chestnut, but, as I happen to be a promising batsman, and not a budding novelist, I am utterly at a loss to describe exactly the kind of tint I mean. Therefore, you must excuse my limitations, particularly as you may find me playing for the County one day, if I confess that the utmost my literary art can do for Miss Grace Trentham’s[89] skin is to say that it most resembled in the richness of its hue a cup of strong tea with plenty of thick cream in it. She had heavy coils of hair of a similar baffling shade, and a mischievous curl or two that made her eyebrows laugh. She was an early-morning girl, English to the bone, and clean and limber as a thorough-bred. I should not have suspected her of afterthoughts, and do not doubt that had I asked her what her opinion was of “Treasure Island,” she would have said without the slightest hesitation, “Oh, isn’t it just ripping!”

When on her invitation we climbed to the seats beside her, we found that she was scoring with a diligence as wonderful as it was artistic. She had two fountain pens—one of black ink, to put down the runs; the other of red, to take the bowling analysis.

“Awfully jolly pleased, Mr. Dimsdale, to see you out so soon,” she said.

“Oh!” said I; my jaw fell.

“You were shaping a great deal too well, you know,” she added.

My jaw resumed its normal position.

“You played Charlie like a book,” she said. “Met him before?”

“Oh, no,” I said briskly.

“Then you batted real well,” she said. “For Charlie’s the best bowler in England now that[90] Tom Richardson’s stale. He’s top of the averages this week. One hundred and fifty-five wickets for 13·83, and he’s certain to get another fifty before the season’s done. At Lord’s he fairly had Oxford on toast; they were in a frightful funk.”

“Yes, yes,” I groaned; feebly adding to cover my distress, “what one would call the bluest of the blue, Miss Trentham.”

Miss Trentham transfixed me with a look of whimsical enquiry. Then she said quickly: “Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t notice your cap. Why weren’t you there to stop the rot? And why didn’t you get your blue when you were up? They only gave you a show in the Freshers’.”

“Nothing near good enough,” I said humbly. But how the deuce did she know that I’d only had a show in the Freshers’? I had yet to learn that her full family title was Grace, the Walking Wisden, because she was so well grounded in that indispensable work that she could repeat even its advertisements by heart.

“’Would be now, Grace, don’t you think?” said the friendly Optimist.

“Ra-ther. His style’s O. K. He watches the ball, too.”

“But it’s such a beautiful wicket,” said I. “You can play forward at anything.”

“It is a good wicket,” she said, “but I could[91] see you watching Charlie all the way. And that’s where ’Varsity bats generally fail, don’t you know. Seen dozens of ’em, blues too, and wonderful school reputations, and all that, regular ‘lions on lawns.’ Put on ’em a Burroughes and Watts’, and they’ll play like the Badminton. But just let the wicket begin to ‘talk’ a bit, then it’s another story. Let me see, were you not in the Winchester eleven?”

“Yes,” I said; “just got in.”

“You must have been well coached. I do like to see a man look at the ball. Oh, was that a hit? No; byes. Dear! dear! Edgcome is a dreadful muff behind the sticks. Can’t take Charlie at all. Why don’t he stand back farther? Or why don’t they have a long-stop? All right, umpire!”

The umpire having waved his finger to signal the byes, the scorer waved hers to show that she had got them.

“Forty up!” she called down to the small boy who was attending to “the telegraph.” “It’s about time we had another wicket, don’t you think?”

“We are all serene at present,” said the Optimist cheerily. “I think Halliday’s about played himself in, and there’s no man better worth watching when he takes root. Oh! very pretty, Jack. Run ’em out!”

He had just got one of H. C.’s fastest away[92] for three. A frown clouded the open countenance of Miss Grace.

“Toddles,” she cried to the Rev. E. J. H. Elphinstone, who was nearest to us in the out-field, “just tell Charlie to tell George to take one of those men out of the slips and put him for the draw. Oh, and Toddles, tell him not too deep to save the single. We’re going to give nothing away if I can help it.”

“Why do they call him Toddles?” said I.

“’Cause his legs are so short,” she said curtly. “Oh, and just look where he’s got his mid-on. Toddles, tell him his mid-on wants to be straighter. George may be a good old sort, and all that, but he’s no more fit to be captain than he is to play for England. But I should have thought Archie would have known better.”

As I was at pains to subsequently explain to those members of our side who were not privileged to be sitting beside Miss Grace Trentham, it was a most fascinating thing to observe her conducting a highly technical and animated conversation, ordering a team of county cricketers about with some caustic comments on the same, scoring every run, taking the analysis, and keeping her eye on the small boy, “the telegraph,” and all the fine points of the game.

“Mr. Dimsdale,” she said, after Captain George[93] had carried out the sedulously conveyed commands of his sister, “Mr. Dimsdale, what were you about, to get out to a long hop of my young brother Tom’s? He can’t bowl a little bit. No length no spin, no break, no devil, no anything. Plain as print! Over-confidence, perhaps?”

“I’m afraid it was,” I confessed.

“Great pity,” she said reflectively. “I should rather have liked you to stay a bit; you’d have been worth looking at. And I’ve just got my doubts about that decision. L B W to left arm round is always a bit fishy, isn’t it? Not, you know, that I’m at all sorry that you’re out. I’m Hickory, of course, and all that, although I do like to see a man play the game. You see, I’m sorry and I’m not sorry. Oh, hang it! I can’t explain it!”

Both the Optimist and I had the ill manners to smile with some breadth. But the solecism was worth committing, if only for the sake of observing the gleam of envy that ran along the row of cricketers on the pavilion front. Weren’t we enjoying ourselves! And they could have been so much farther from the mark. I might never have been leg before in my life.

“’Mustn’t get over-confident, you know, if you’re going to make a first-rater,” Miss Grace said authoritatively; “great mistake. But I believe[94] you were not so very confident when you first went in. In fact, I thought you were just—just a wee bit nervous. I wouldn’t have minded betting a shilling that Charlie did you first over. Weren’t you a bit nervous?”

“Oh dear, no,” I said, resenting the imputation with great robustness. “I’m never nervous.”

She was evidently a young person of the most horrible penetration. What could have put these ideas into her mind?

“Don’t you think,” she said suddenly, “that my young brother Tom would get on better if he took to playing marbles? His bowling is dreadfully awful, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s not so good as your brother Charlie’s,” I said diplomatically.

“Thank you,” she said sardonically; “I’ll write that down. But say, yes; I do want you to say, yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see, I maintain in the face of all my people that it is absolute rubbish. They all think he’s rather good for a boy. They say at Harrow that he’s going to make another Dowson. But if that’s so, it don’t take much to make a Dowson, does it? Do, Mr. Dimsdale, please say that you think it’s awful rot. It is, you know, really. And the amount of side that boy’s got on is something extraordinary. He might be the Old Man himself.[95] Thinks himself no end of a swell ’cause he’s diddled a few schoolboys with his donkey-drops. Never saw such a length in my life. Why don’t George shunt him and give Billington a try?”

Even as she spoke the captain, who was now thoroughly set, was seen to gather himself for a great effort. At last he ventured to have a go at this severely criticised slow bowler. Up and up went the ball a remarkable height, and, to the horror of the Optimist and myself, we saw that it must drop into the hands of the little parson just below us on the boundary. We both held our breaths in a spasm of suspense, but Miss Grace seemed as happy as possible.

“It’s all right,” she said cheerfully; “Toddles’ll have him. He never drops anything he can get to; and he’s judging this to a ‘T.’ What a height it is, though, and deceptive, too! He’ll have to go back a bit now.”

Next instant a derisive howl broke from the crowd. The little parson, famed the whole of England over for his brilliancy and certainty at third man and in the country, having slightly misjudged the flight and height of the catch, had had to go back in a hurry at the last moment, with the result that his hands and body were in a very overbalanced kind of position in which to receive the ball. He had failed to hold it.

[96]“Oh, Toddles! Toddles!” cried Miss Grace, in agonized accents; “what are you doing?”

The relief of the Optimist and myself was such that we must have hugged one another had we not been in a place so public. Poor Miss Grace, though, was perfectly crimson with mortification, and we could fairly hear the tears in her voice as she said with a sublime pathos, “He’ll get a hundred now!”

“I ’LL never forgive that wretched Toddles!” said Miss Grace. “It was careless of him. It’s inexcusable for a county man to drop anything. The little brute!”

“But, my dear Grace,” said the Optimist, kind soul, who looked at everything from a humanitarian standpoint, “the best men are liable to err.”

“They shouldn’t be,” said Miss Grace fiercely, “with the practice they get.”

“But human nature is fallible,” urged the Optimist gently.

“I don’t care a pin about human nature!” said Miss Grace, more fiercely than ever. “What’s human nature got to do with cricket? Did that miserable Toddles drop that catch, or did he not? It’s simply disgraceful. I hate slovenly fielding.”

“It was a very difficult catch, though,” said the[98] Optimist, still doing his best for the fallen favourite. “Awful lot of spin on, and look at the height; besides, the sun was in his eyes, and the flight must have been dreadfully deceptive.”

“I don’t care about the spin,” said the inexorable Miss Grace, “or the height, or the flight, or the light, or the sight, or the anything. Toddles ought to have had that catch. Jimmy Douglas ’ud have had it in his mouth. And if your Captain does get a hundred, I’ll give that wretched Toddles such a talking to as he won’t forget in a hurry. You can laugh, Mr. Dimsdale. It’s all right for you: sixty-four and only one wicket down. We can’t afford to give away a leg-bye on a wicket like this.”

“But I never saw better ground-fielding than Hickory’s to-day,” said I soothingly. Certainly their fielding as a whole had been excellent.

“They know they’ve got to field when they play for Hickory,” said Miss Grace sternly. “They know better than to get slack. A man who won’t field oughtn’t to be allowed to play. Every man can field if he tries. Even poor old George has to buck up when he plays for Hickory. He knows that I simply won’t have it. He daren’t funk a single one; and he has to get down to ’em with both hands, rheumatism or no rheumatism. I’ll have none of his Artillery tricks. Gave him an hour’s[99] practice this morning before we started, and by the time he’s been here a month he’ll be quite a reformed character. Look, he’s positively energetic. Did you see his smart return. He knows I’m watching him. Well fielded, George!”

As her clear voice rang out, the face of every one of the eleven fielders lit up with a smile.

“That seems to please them,” said I slyly. “I suppose you must be very chary with praise.”

“I have to be,” she said. “They take an awful lot of bringing to the scratch. George says I’m a regular martinet; and my young brother Tom says I’m a confounded nuisance. But that’s his cheek, of course; he’s an unlicked cub, don’t you see; he’s got to go through the mill yet. Do you know, Cheery [this apparently was a name of her own for the Optimist], that I can’t stand these schoolboys at all. My young brother Tom had quite a nice little way of bringing two or three of the Harrow eleven, and one or two other men of light and leading from the other schools, down to the Vicarage. Talk about ‘side,’ I never saw anything like it. They wanted a Wisden all to themselves; and to hear ’em talk you’d have thought that Stoddy meant taking ’em all out with him in the autumn. They thought Archie’s batting was ‘not so bad,’ and Charlie’s bowling ‘rather decent’; but what a pity it was that I hadn’t seen Comery of Eton,[100] and Prospect of Charterhouse. And they wouldn’t have a few on our lawn because they thought it a bad thing for their style. Style, indeed! their style consists in jolly well going forward to every jolly thing. And they didn’t bowl ’cause it was too much fag; and there wasn’t much fun in fielding. I told my old guv’nor pretty straight that they’d have to clear out; and they had to. And now I absolutely refuse to have ’em. No more Harrow boys if I know it. One has to draw the line somewhere, hasn’t one? Not that my young brother Tom is half a bad sort, really. Of course his side is something dazzling; but when he’s been from school for about a week it begins to get some o’ the gilt chipped off it. Don’t quite do, don’t you know. Some of those other fellows’ sisters think it just beautiful and admire it ever so. I don’t. But I’m gradually getting my young brother Tom to forget himself a bit. He don’t spread himself now anything like he used to. I think we shall lick him into shape, and make a county cricketer of him after all. But he’ll have to roll up a different sort o’ length to that. ’Nother boundary. Halliday only wants two more for his fifty. Eighty up, boy. Hullo! I see Archie’s beginning to look a bit prickly. Doesn’t suit his book at all. Oh, they’re going to change the bowling at last, are they? Dear me, what intelligence! Who are they[101] putting on? What, Swipes, with his awful stuff! If they really want ’em to get runs why don’t they put on Toddles? What with their fielding, and their judgment, and their general knowledge o’ the game, they’re simply giving this match away. Eighty-two for one; what rot!”

Miss Grace’s annoyance was increasing in company with the score. As the sting was extracted from Hickory’s bowling, and it came in for severer punishment, she grew particularly caustic in her criticisms. And the greater her anger, the greater her frankness, till presently she became a real delight to sit and listen to. Before long the Optimist and I were holding our sides for simple mirth.

“I don’t wonder at it,” she said; “must be no end of a joke to you to see ’em tossing up this sort of ‘tosh.’ And their fielding, too. Just look at the wicket-keeper; why will he keep snapping ’em, instead of waiting and taking ’em gently, like McGregor? There, that’s Halliday’s fifty; I know he’ll get his hundred. But don’t cheer, please. Look at the luck he’s had. It’s too bad of that wretched Toddles!”

Poor Miss Grace was almost tearful when her mind reverted to that catastrophe. There was undoubtedly a rod in pickle for the hapless Elphinstone.

“Ninety up. Really this is too bad!” cried she.[102] “Charlie’s going off now; had a pretty long spell, too. But they’ve only got thirty-one off him.”

“Fine bowler, isn’t he?” I said, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters; “but he’s had no luck this morning. Grand built chap as well.”

“Could do with a bit more head though,” said his censorious sister, who seemed so severe a critic that it struck me that it was a pity the Athenæum did not know about her. She would have given the sprouting novelists and spring poets some talkings-to!

Runs were coming now with exhilarating frequency. The Captain was beginning to score all round the wicket, off anything they liked to send him. There was no more dangerous or resourceful bat in England when once he got his eye in. The Ancient, too, was moving steadily in the direction of his fifty. It would be idle to insist that he had a pleasing style; indeed, he did not appear to have a style of any kind. He had no physique, and you might watch him get a hundred, and then wonder how he’d got them, as he hadn’t a single stroke worthy of the name. But there was no man on the side who got runs with such striking regularity; and when the meteors and comets had appeared and disappeared, this ordinary fixed star was still at the wickets, cocking ’em under his leg for two and sneaking short ones. From time immemorial[103] he had done the same. He had played oftener in Little Clumpton v. Hickory than any of the giants of the past, and with such an honourable distinction that the aggregate of his runs greatly excelled that of anybody else. How far back in antiquity the Ancient had first enjoyed his being, history never could determine. In the Little Clumpton v. Hickory of twenty years ago, when the Ancient made 64 not out, and pulled the match out of the fire, tradition said that he looked even older than he looked to-day; and his manner was so perennially youthful, too, that it was not until he took his cap off, that one would have guessed he was a patriarch. Men might come and men might go, but he went on for ever.

“Hundred and ten up,” called Miss Grace.

“How many’s Oldknow got?” the Optimist inquired.

“Why, he’s actually got thirty-three!” she said, in a startled tone. “How has he got them? I’m waiting to see him make a decent stroke. But he don’t edge ’em, and he don’t fluke ’em, and he don’t give chances, and he don’t look as though they’ll bowl him in a year. Thirty-three? Isn’t it marvellous? He can’t bat a bit, though, can he?”

“Oh no, not a bit,” said I; “at least, that’s what everybody says. No one ever thinks anything of Oldknow’s batting, but if there’s runs to be got[104] Oldknow always considers it his duty to get ’em. For the last ten years his average for Little Clumpton has panned out at forty-six, and since he gets steadily better as his hair gets whiter, by the middle of next century he will have worked it up to something over sixty. He’ll still be going in first wicket down and coming out last but one. He won’t go in first, a place for which Nature certainly designed him, as he abhors ostentation of any kind. That is why he so carefully refrains from making strokes that are at all likely to appeal to the eye of the multitude. There, he’s popped one under his leg for another two.”

“Isn’t it perfectly atrocious?” said Miss Grace indignantly. “Why does he do it?”

“To bring his score up to thirty-five,” said the Optimist, “without the crowd suspecting that he’s got so many. If they were to applaud him, they’d put him off his game.”

“I wish they would, then,” said Miss Grace cruelly. “Why don’t somebody bowl him? the little horror! There, did you see him snick that one away for another single? That makes him thirty-six. It’s positively wicked of him. I wonder how a silly point would affect him?”

“Every low dodge of that kind has been tried and found wanting years ago,” said the Optimist.

Miss Grace grew pensive for a moment.

[105]“I have it!” she cried. “I’ll tell Charlie, if he’s still in at lunch, to go on again at the top end, and pitch short and bump ’em. If Charlie hit him over the heart about four times, that might give him pause, don’t you think?”

“I doubt it,” said I; “unless Charlie happens to be a Maxim gun.”

WHEN the bell rang for luncheon at half-past one, the score-sheet was pretty reading:—

As the players came trooping in from the field, pangs of sadness overtook both the Optimist and me, for we knew that for the present our right good time was at an end. We were condemned to go and lunch in the stuffy marquee, among the wasps and bad speeches. But I had failed to allow for the particular talent of the Optimist. He is a man who is certain to make his mark in diplomacy one day. His eye had observed a pretty substantial hamper on the roof of the coach.

“Pity us, Grace,” said he appealingly, as we[107] prepared to descend. “We’ve got to spend the next hour in that ‘Inferno,’ fishing flies out of the salad and ‘hearing, hearing’ the Earl’s annual, ‘Gentlemen, I can assure you that this auspicious occasion is one of the proudest moments of my—er—er—life.’ Pity us, Grace!”

“I do, old chap,” said Grace, very earnestly. “But you needn’t, you know. That is, if you can stand sandwiches and ginger beer. There’s lots here, in the hamper. Oh! and I think there’s a bottle of fizz.”

“It’s really too good of you,” said the Optimist. But Miss Grace was so prompt in her attempt to pull forth the hamper in question from under the seat that our thanks, scruples, and retreat were all alike submerged in the assistance we felt bound to lend her.

“What a weight it is!” said I. “There must be enough for both teams here.”

“I believe in being prepared for emergencies,” said she. “Feed ’em, I say. A man that can’t eat’s no good for cricket. And there’s certain to be some of the boys along presently. Hullo! here’s Charlie, for one. Don’t he look awfully sorry for himself, poor old chap! That’s ’cause he’s got no wickets. Buck up, Charlie!”

The best bowler in England climbed up on to the roof.

[108]“Now then, Grace,” said he briskly. “Keep ’em from that fizz. Two of your beef-slabs round, mind, before that’s touched. That’s for dessert. Brightside, I should recommend you to stick to Caley. I’m certain to bowl you neck and heels if you don’t.”

“Same as you’ve been serving ’em this morning,” said Miss Grace.

“Don’t be rude, Grace,” said he. “But give me a sandwich. Oh, I say, and do you see which fizz you’ve brought? Whew! won’t there be a row! You know that the Guv’nor particularly said it was not to be touched.”

“Well, Charlie, now,” said his sister, “do you think I’d bring that sugary stuff to give to pretty nearly a county team?—one of ’em going out with Stoddy, too. But the Guv.’s an awful good sort, and I’m sure he’ll see it in a proper light when I explain to him that I couldn’t possibly give that horrid what-do-you-call-it to a team like we’ve got to-day. Besides, he’d only have let the Bishop and the Rural Dean have had it. I’ll take good care they don’t get it, though. Let ’em stick to their port. Never saw such a pair of old muffs in my life. ’Don’t know a bat from a bagpipe!” Then, as she distributed a napkinful of the solidest beef sandwiches I ever saw, she continued with manifest perplexity: “Do you know that I can never[109] understand on what principle they go on in the Church to get their preferment. There’s Toddles, now. Look at Toddles. ’Got his Blue, plays for Kent and the Gentlemen, and his cutting’s simply marvellous, and yet he’s just a common curate. And then there’s my old Guv’nor. ’Don’t want to boast, but my old Guv’nor’s—— Well, look what Lillywhite says about him. He’d play the whole Dean and Chapter left hand with a toothpick, and yet he don’t wear gaiters. ’Can’t reckon it up at all. Don’t it seem ridiculous? ’specially when you come to think of the set of old duffers who do.”

“Grace, don’t be libellous,” said the best bowler in England, with a face of keen enjoyment. “Drop your jaw and look sharp with those glasses.”

“May I participate in this pleasant function?” said a meek voice. The little parson clambered on to the roof and smiled into our midst.

“Toddles!” cried Miss Grace, with a flashing eye. “How dare you! Don’t you show your face here, you—you—you little curate! Aren’t you thoroughly ashamed?”

“My dear Grace, I have no words in which to express my penitence,” said the little parson, in a broken tone; but as he looked at us his face had such a twinkle in it that I’m sure he must have been a master of deceit.

[110]“Oh, you haven’t!” said Miss Grace scornfully. “Well, Toddles, it’s lucky for you that you made that score against Notts yesterday. One can’t say exactly what’s in one’s mind to a man who’s just made a score like that. Say you’re sorry, Toddles, and I’ll forgive you.”

“Oh, Grace! how magnanimous you are!” cried the little parson, in throbbing accents. “I can assure you that time only will assuage my sorrow!”

“If time don’t, stone-ginger will, and that’s a cert.,” said the irreverent Charlie. “Try one, old man”; and the best bowler in England poured out a Caley for the erring one.

The little parson tossed it off, and fell upon a massive sandwich with a vigour that was in disproportion to his inches.

It was one of the liveliest cricket lunches at which I ever assisted; and I think the heartiest. Miss Grace’s sandwiches had certainly been designed for very punishing batsmen and terrific fast bowlers. Two great slices of bread with a succulent chunk of beef between went to the making of them. He who ate one had partaken of no inconsiderable meal; he who ate two must have had an appetite of which any man ought to have been proud. But Miss Grace herself set us all a noble example. She fell on one of these tremendous[111] slabs with the courage of a lion, and had a big stone-ginger all to herself.

“Charlie,” said the little parson, “we’d better put Grace on at the top end after lunch. She seems in great form.”

“’Wish you would,” said Grace wistfully. “I’d shift ’em. ’Just feel like it. Pass the mustard, Mr. Dimsdale. Thanks aw’fly. Cheery, help yourself. ’Won’t wait to be invited, will you? You’ll find some apples underneath. Now then, Toddles, buck up! You’re not in church. Ham or beef? ’Nother beer for Charlie.”

“If we’d only got some gin, it would improve it,” sighed England’s best bowler.

“Mr. Dimsdale, if you’ll look in the left-hand corner, right down at the bottom,” said Miss Grace, “you’ll find a bottle. Charlie, how dare you! Don’t you touch that fizz. Mr. Dimsdale, I repose implicit confidence in you.”

“Grace,” said the best bowler in England, brandishing the gin bottle, “you’re a trump!”

“Always was,” said Miss Grace. “But it’s not until Middlesex and Kent get beastly, jolly hungry that they think it worth their while to talk about it.”

“Oh, you’ve got your points,” said her brother. “You do know how to feed us. ’Seem to know exactly what we like. Your feeding’s lovely. Look at these sandwiches; they’re a dream.”

[112]“Two of ’em ’d be a nightmare,” said the little parson.

“For a man your size, perhaps,” Miss Grace said. “Ought to have brought a few of those anchovy things for you. And, Toddles, I forbid you to have gin. Sure to get into your head, you know, and then you’d miss another catch.”

“Here, no-ball! That’s a chuck!” cried Charlie. “I’ll have Jim Phillips to you, Grace. You don’t give the poor chap a chance.”

“Charlie, if you’re rude you’ll get no fizz.”

Miss Grace foraged in the hamper and produced two bottles of that giddy liquid. She promptly began to unwire them, too. Disdaining our earnest and repeated offers to withdraw the corks, she pulled them out herself with considerable ease and neatness, saying,—

“’Daren’t trust you men with this. I’ll measure it myself, then all of us will get a share. Hands down, Charlie. Oh, yes, I know being a bowler’s beastly thirsty; thank you so much for reminding me. Look alive, Mr. Dimsdale, with those glasses. You’ll find ’em wrapped up in the Sporting Life.”

“She means The Woman at Home, in Annie S. Swan’s grand new serial,” said the little parson, with something that bore a perilous resemblance to a common wink.

“Go on, pile it up!” The voice of Miss Grace[113] was more indignant than the hissing of the fizz. “And, Toddles, I saw you. Oh, you naughty little curate. You’d better be careful, Toddles, or I won’t work that sweater for you. Pass that to Cheery. Don’t drink it yet. I’ve got to propose a toast.”

When we were all furnished with a means to honour it, our hostess insisted on our standing up along with her, whereon she held the glass aloft, and cried in a voice pregnant with emotion:

“Here’s luck to good old Stoddy in the autumn!”

We pledged him with great fervour.

“I say, you men,” said Grace. “That went well, didn’t it? And I say, isn’t this stuff just prime. My old guv’nor knows a thing or two. And what price the Bishop and the Rural Dean? It’s positive extravagance in my old guv’nor to lavish it on those old jossers. But they look like being left, eh? Next time they’ll get the other sort, and that’ll sour their ‘outlook,’ and their preaching won’t be quite so full of hope. But we’d better finish it now it’s here. Fill up, and we’ll drink another.”

The second was: “Here’s luck to good old Archie of that ilk!”

This was drunk with acclamation. And the champagne still continuing to hold out, nothing would satisfy the enthusiasm of Miss Grace but[114] that a third should be proposed. It was evidently pretty near her heart, for her colour rose, her eyes sparkled, and her lips began to tremble.

“Here’s to dear old Charlie, and may Stoddy have the sense to take him too. And it’s a great big shame he’s not been yet invited!”

Charlie having been pushed down into an attitude of repose by main force, we drank this more heartily than ever. And the feeling provoked by the peculiar circumstances of the case was so extreme, that when the gallant little parson broke out into a rousing cheer that did an infinite amount of credit to so small a man, the rest of us supported him in such a stentorian fashion that we attracted the attention of the general public.

“Stow that rot!” exclaimed the best bowler in England, whose discomposure was rather painful. “Confound you, Grace, what have you got to play the giddy goat like this for!”

“Speech! speech!” cried Miss Grace, hugely delighted at the condition to which she had reduced him. The great bowler grew more embarrassed than ever.

“Now then, Charlie, buck up,” said his sister. “Don’t keep us waiting. We can’t get on with the serious business, the sandwiches and so forth, until you’ve acknowledged the honour that we’ve done you. Now then, let’s see you do the thing in[115] style. Like you used to do it at the Union, you know. What price, old Charlie, at the Union?”

“Oh, this is all beastly bally rot,” exclaimed the great bowler most miserably red. “Dimsdale, if you don’t stop grinning, you’ll be sorry. Grace, I’ll get level with you, take my word. I’ll drop every bally catch that comes, and talk about misfielding and the overthrows—I’ll give you beans!”

Miss Grace, in her capacity as president of the feast, hammered the hamper top with an empty stone-ginger beer bottle in a very resolute manner, and said:

“Now then, Charlie, are you going to buck up and begin? Something in the Earl’s style, don’t you know. ‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ sort of thing. You know, something with a bit of class about it, and not so much of your awfully beastly bally. Not good form at all you know, Charlie. Quite third rate, don’t you know. Now then, I’ve given you a friendly lead. Let’s see you stand up like a man, and say, ‘Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am——’ Well, why don’t you go on?”

“Just you shut your face, Grace, and pass me a ham sandwich, and let’s have the mustard this way. You’d better drop your rotting, Grace, it really isn’t funny,” said the poor bowler wriggling dismally.

[116]“You’re pretty humorous though,” said his sister cruelly. “If you’ll be good enough to look as funny as that till I find my kodak. I’ll take a snapshot of you. You would send up the circulation of the Windsor Magazine. ‘Eminent cricketer replying to the toast of his health.’ What, ho!”

If a wasp had not settled itself on the dazzling white collar of poor Charlie’s persecutor and demanded extremely discreet conduct on the part of Miss Grace whilst three men gallantly but cautiously arranged its capture and decease, it is possible that the great bowler’s bad time would have continued longer than it did. Miss Grace Trentham, having rather severely handled a famous exponent of the game, turned her attention to one of even greater eminence. Stoddart’s blindness in omitting to ask Charlie to make the trip to Australia was trenchantly reviewed.

“If Stoddy don’t take Charlie,” Miss Grace said with weighty deliberation, “Stoddy’ll be wrong. Charlie’s worth three Jack Hearnes this season, and Mold and Richardson aren’t in it. ’Fact it’s my ’pinion that if Charlie had only got a bit more intellect, and hadn’t such a gift for drinking things, he’d be another Spoff.”

“Go on, Grace, keep at it,” murmured the gentleman in question with a most pathetic air of resignation. “That’s the fizz. Girls and champagne as[117] usual. To watch the fluent way they lip it, you’d think it was only milk. But it gets there just the same. Go on, Grace; let’s hear what else it’s got to say.”

“Charlie, you’re a coarse person,” said his sister. “You had better take your hat off to let the sun expurgate your ideas a bit.”

“Grace,” said the little parson, “you’re a regular Jessop when it comes to hitting. That’s six.”

“Do you believe in dreams, Mr. Dimsdale?” said Miss Grace suddenly.

“Well, I was born in the West country, so I suppose I’m obliged to,” said I.

“Well, I dreamt last night but one,” said she, “that a wire came from town to Charlie, saying, ‘Will you complete team? Name inadvertently omitted. Stoddart.’”

A roar of laughter considerably interfered with Miss Grace’s narrative.

“Grace, if you keep playing this game,” said the best bowler in England, fighting for his breath, “I shall die young. Name inadvertently omitted’s rather good.”

“Certain it has been,” said Miss Grace with deep conviction. “Stoddy would never be such a blind owl as to leave you out on purpose, Charlie. I’ve a very high opinion of Stoddy.”

“Stoddy will be pleased,” piped the little parson.

[118]“If that’s meant for sarcasm, Toddles,” said Miss Grace, “you’d better save it for your fielding. It needs it more than I do.”

“Put her down another six,” said Charlie. “She’s serving all the bowling alike. She is in a punishing mood. Toddles, if you’ll take my tip, you’ll go off next over.”

“Don’t take much to flog the stuff you’ve been rolling up this morning, anyhow,” said Miss Grace truculently. “But I’ve been on the point of writing to Stoddy once or twice to tell him that he’s forgotten to invite you, Charlie.”

“Good God, what the, the——!” spluttered the horrified Charlie very incoherently indeed. The bare possibility of such an unheard of proceeding half paralysed the poor bowler. His clerical friend, who had acquired in some mysterious manner a laugh that began in his boots and rose in Rabelaisian moments as high as his knee-joints, nearly tumbled off the coach in wrestling with it.

“I would do it if I thought I would,” said Miss Grace stoutly, and the half-perplexed solemnity of her countenance made three of us howl with joy; the fourth, however, looked as though he would never smile again.

“You needn’t tell us that, we know it,” moaned the poor bowler. “That’s why you’re such a source of comfort to us.”

[119]“Toddles,” said Miss Grace, addressing herself to the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, who was engaged in shinning the Optimist on the off-chance that the Optimist’s mind might be invaded by some much-needed solemnity, “Toddles, your behaviour is positively low. But Charlie, now, don’t you think, as Stoddy must have overlooked you, it would be doing the right thing by him to write and tell him so before it is too late? No good for him to know it, would it, when Sid Gregory and Clem Hill and that lot are knocking the cover off the ball as they did before?”

“Go on, go on,” said the great bowler; “it sounds like sacred music.”

“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “I’m not going to let England lose the rubber this time, if I can help it. And they will, that’s a cert., if you’re not there, Charlie, to rattle their timber. They can play everybody else as easily as they’d play that stuff o’ Toddles’s.”

“Cheek,” said the reverend patentee of “that stuff o’ Toddles’s,” employing the power of speech with evident difficulty, “awful cheek.”

“Always was you know, Toddles, your bowling,” said Miss Grace indulgently. “But we won’t go into that now. What ought I to say to Stoddy when I write him? Would he think it too familiar if I began, ‘My dear Mr. Stoddart,’ or ought it to be[120] ‘Dear Sir’? Don’t quite know how to start it, don’t you know. You see Stoddy’s not exactly an ordinary person, don’t you see. The Guv’nor says great men are so touchy.”

Miss Grace was evidently embarrassed. So were some others. The little parson’s laughter rumbled from his boots until one wondered how his small eights could hold so much. As for the unhappy Charlie, he was so completely demoralised that after saying, “Why don’t some of you men give her another stone-ginger to keep her quiet?” he proceeded to fill an immense tumbler with neat gin for that purpose, under the impression that he was pouring out ginger beer.

When at last things had sorted themselves out a bit, during which process Miss Grace, the innocent cause of this disorder, regarded us all with unaffected gravity, the little parson said, with an expression of really concentrated elfishness: “But you know, you men, there’s a wonderful amount of truth in what Grace says. If Stoddy really has forgotten Charlie, and if she reminds him of the fact, she will be doing a service to her country, won’t she?”

“By Jove, she will,” chorused the Optimist and I.

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure I’ll write to Stoddy then,” said Grace.

And she looked as though she meant to do it too.

[121]The poor bowler had got about as much as he could bear. I think I never saw a grown man look more completely overborne. He began doggedly to munch another sandwich, and nearly choked himself by trying to whistle a jaunty music hall ditty expressive of heart-easing mirth with his mouth full. When he spoke, his voice was so subdued and melancholious that, as Miss Grace said, it reminded her of Toddles reading the marriage service.

“She’ll do it,” he said. “Rather a good joke for me, eh? He’s sure to show it to McGregor and O’Brien and that lot. They’ll simply die. Shan’t be able to show my face up at Lord’s for years. Awfully nice for me, eh?”

“Well,” Miss Grace said, “I hope Stoddy does show it to McGregor and O’Brien and that lot. They’ll tell him what a fool he’s been to overlook you, Charlie.”

“She means it,” said I, to console him.

“I should rather think she does,” said he. “If she once gets a giddy idea into that gaudy feminine head of hers, there’s nothing can shift it. She’s a downright terror. And, I should like to know what cove it was that said women had no sense o’ humour. Why they’re that darned funny they ought to be put in a circus.”

“Awful good sort Grace is though, when you get[122] to know her,” said the little parson, most caressingly, “and no end of a patriot as well. She sinks all private and domestic matters when the welfare of her country is concerned. Shouldn’t be a bit surprised if, when this leaks out, they don’t get up a shilling testimonial to her in the Daily Telegraph.”

“’Nother beer for Toddles,” said the recipient of this flattery, “and Toddles, you can have some gin in it, if you like.”

Mercifully enough for her luckless brother Charlie, Miss Grace here remembered that she was hostess, and suspended the conversation to a more convenient season while she ministered to our wants. We all fell again in earnest to our interrupted meal; but I’m sure that the best bowler in England was so depressed throughout his entire being, that he couldn’t possibly have enjoyed his.

There was a delicious sense of out-of-doors and the open air as we sat up here under the genial sun of summer. The band was playing now, and the smart mob from the various carriages and the ladies’ tent was parading the bright green lawn prior to the resumption of the game. The crowd was beginning to re-assemble round the ring. And here and there we could observe from our exalted situation, various of the players making a tour of the ground, in their “blancoed” boots and brilliant blazers, pretty generally accompanied too by graceful[123] persons in straw hats and white piqué. Some of these graceful persons happened to be “dressed,” it is true, but their costumes bid the pen pause, as nothing less than a fashion journal could describe them.

“I think girls look jolly nice and cool all in white,” said Charlie. “None of your brown holland for me, thank you. Aren’t fond o’ that ruffly, crumply sort o’ stuff, are you Toddles?”

“No,” said the cruel Toddles. “And to my unsophisticated mind plain ribands look more chaste than those staring Zingari ties and things they crib from their male relations.”

But Miss Grace was far too occupied in attacking her mighty second sandwich, and insisting on her guests adventuring a third, holding that great virtues were resident therein, to heed this brilliant persiflage. Besides, the injustice was too palpable. For I’m certain that had Grace chosen to wear a potato sack, with a ribbon of the Zingari black, red and yellow round the neck of it, she would have made an effect all poetry and sunshine and been a positive delight. The brown holland was quite plain and simple, without one suspicion of a flounce; but its wearer had invested it with all the glamours of a love scene out of Meredith. Hers was a natural genius of beauty for which she was not all responsible. Without the slightest art or consideration,[124] it looked out of her eyes. She must have known all about it, being a girl. Nevertheless she was not in the least uplifted by it, and would have much preferred to play for Middlesex than to be the belle of a London season.

When at last the formal luncheon was at an end, and the Earl’s speech had been duly delivered for the benefit of the Little Clumpton Advertiser, two persons of light and leading were observed to be bearing down upon our drag. One was the honourable and reverend parent of Miss Grace; the other was the Earl himself. It was good to notice the celerity with which our hostess slipped the empty champagne bottles, bearing their tell-tale labels, back into the hamper at the first approach of these dignitaries.

“Mum’s the word, you know,” said she, “if the Guv wants to know what we’ve had to drink. His natural benevolence sometimes leads him to ask lots o’ questions that he oughtn’t to.”

As soon as the new comers halted immediately beneath us, Miss Grace greeted them in the hearty fashion that was her wont.

“Hullo, father! had a good lunch? Hullo, Dicky! Got your speech off all comfy, or did you break down in the middle, as you usually do?”

“A bit nearer the end this time,” said the Earl.

[125]“Anyhow,” said Miss Grace, “I hope you didn’t shove in your usual reference to Alfred Mynn and Fuller Pilch and that crowd. I think everybody’s getting about sick of ’em. What with the Old Man and Ranji and Andrew Lang, they’re getting stale. You take my advice, Dicky, and give ’em a rest. Everybody’ll be so grateful, and as it’ll make your peroration shorter by about ten minutes, you can bet that their gratitude will be pretty genuine.”

“Clean out of the ground again,” cried England’s best bowler in great delight. “’Nother six. She keeps on lifting ’em. Charlie Thornton isn’t in it. Dick, you take my advice, and clear out o’ this while you’re well.”

“What have I done to deserve this?” said the poor Earl appealingly.

“’Feel like it,” said Miss Grace. “And so would you, Dicky, had you been sitting up here all the jolly morning putting down Little Clumpton’s runs, watching Halliday batting like an angel, and Toddles dropping him, and ordinary club men smacking Charlie’s best for fours. 165 for one; isn’t it disgraceful? However, you had better come up here, Dicky, and I’ll give you an apple to keep you good.”

“Can’t, much as I regret it,” said the Earl. “’Got my social duties to attend to.”

[126]“A useful yarn,” said Miss Grace.

“And, Laura,” said the deep voice of Miss Grace’s parent, “I should like you to come down and attend to yours. There’s all the county here, and you’ve not even acknowledged them yet.”

“’Haven’t seen one of ’em except in the distance,” said his ingenuous daughter.

“You are scarcely likely to, if you carefully keep out of their way,” said the Rector.

“Seems to be a lot o’ truth in that,” said Miss Grace, wagging her head very thoughtfully. “Funny I didn’t think of that before. But I tell you what, pater: if they ask you where I am, tell ’em I’ve got an old frock on, and that I’m afraid to face the music. It’ll please ’em awfully, and it won’t hurt me. See!”

By the anxious expression on the old gentleman’s face it was evident that this proposal was not altogether in accordance with his ideas. He was deeply desirous of bringing his daughter round to his own point of view, yet didn’t know how. It was clearly a case for a mamma to exercise her prerogative, as a mere father is not made of stern enough stuff to thwart a daughter in the enjoyment of her own way. Miss Grace, however, was by no means insensible to her parent’s deeply solicitous look.

“All right, father, I’ll come,” she said. Then,[127] turning round to us, added in an apologetic undertone, “My old guv’nor’s such an awful good sort, don’t you see, that when he looks like that, I can’t resist him. But I sha’n’t stop long. Can’t stand a set o’ women inquiring whether I take any interest in cricket, and can I tell ’em what a maiden is, and what are those funny things that some o’ the men have got strapped on their legs? I shall cut early. And oh! I say, Cheery, will you do the scoring while I’m gone? ’Know how to take the analysis, don’t you? In red ink, mind. Here you are. Oh! and if you observe any of those public school cubs prowling round, don’t let ’em come up. Keep ’em down with your boot. Bye, bye; back soon!”

Miss Grace then departed to do the right thing by her friends, just as the bell rang for the clearance of the ground. And as she walked, with the Earl on one side of her and her parent on the other, she looked not unlike a deserter being reluctantly led back in custody to her regiment.

“POOR old Grace!” said the little parson. “Quite a martyr to public duty, isn’t she? I didn’t think she’d go.”

“And she wouldn’t, that’s a moral,” said her brother, “had it been anybody but the Guv. Her consideration for the Guv is something beautiful. ’Wish she’d extend it to some other members of her family.”

“There’s none of ’em can grumble,” said the little parson warmly. “She’s a mother to the lot. ’Gives you milk gruel when you’re sick. ’Won’t have you stay out late. ’Sends you in strict training before the Gentlemen and Players. ’Always up at Lords to give you the privilege of her advice. ’Coaches the lot of you like a pro. ’Dots your I’s and crosses your T’s for you, and puts your eyes and limbs together generally. Surely it isn’t reasonable to expect more from a sister; but some men want so thundering much. Tell you what, my boy, if there’d been no Grace to restrict[129] your spiritual needs and minister to your temporal, Cambridge hadn’t cut up Oxford as they did, and Middlesex hadn’t been champion county. Grace is a trump!”

The little parson’s heat was such that he was compelled to wipe his forehead.

“Oh, I don’t deny that Grace has her points,” said that young person’s brother.

“And no end of a fine girl is Grace,” said the little parson, quite at the mercy of his theme. “Real A 1, and looks it. And there’s nobody to deny it either.”

“’Never could see it myself,” drawled Charlie, who in his fraternal capacity was of course at no pains to conceal his boredom. “’Can’t see where her looks come in at all.”

“If she were some other fellow’s sister, it’s likely that you might,” said I.

Perhaps it was that my tone conveyed more than I was aware of, for the great bowler looked at me with a shrewdly humorous countenance that rather reminded me of Robert Abel’s.

“Hullo, Toddles!” he observed. “What price that? ’Nother victim. I’m getting to recognise the symptoms straight away. But, Dimsdale, you be advised. The Rectory positively reeks of slaughtered innocence. Two refused last week. Now, don’t you come and play the goat.”

[130]“Wonder who it will be in the end?” asked the poor dear Optimist to cover my retreat. But his own effort was a perfect masterpiece of self-repression.

“Perhaps the noble Earl,” said the little parson. “He’s been right over his ears this two years. Poor old Dick!”

“No blooming fear!” said Miss Grace’s brother, with a profound conviction that both delighted and depressed the poor old Optimist and the miserable me. “Dick’s a rank outsider. ’Hasn’t a thousand-to-one chance. Last time he tried it on he sank so low as to tell her what his income was. ‘Now, look here, Dick,’ said she, ‘I don’t care a straw about your income; what’s your batting average?’ Fact! Told it to the ’Varsity, and they put it in The Granta. And the joke is, that Dick is the most horrible muff you ever saw. ’Couldn’t get a run to save his life. Well, he sent for Attewell and Brockwell to coach him all the spring. But he’s not yet at the top of the first-class averages.”

“Well, who will it be?” I asked recklessly.

“Ask another,” said Charlie, “for I’m hanged if I know. Ranji in his best year might have had a look in, and I think she’d take the Old Man even now. Jacker, and Stoddy, and Archie McLaren, and that crush, all just miss it.”

“All just miss it?” I said weakly.

[131]“All just miss it,” said Charlie magisterially. “If Sammy Woods’s heart had stood the strain, his bowling might have put him in the running, because she says that, whereas batsmen are a common growth, bowlers come from heaven.”

As the best bowler in England quoted this opinion, the twinkle in his eye was marvellous.

“But Jack Mason and Charlie Fry have been going pretty strong of late,” said the little parson.

“They’ll have to be regular Sandows before they’ll fill her eye,” said Grace’s brother, “she’s that mighty hypercritical. At least, that’s what a literary Johnny called her. He kept rolling Greek up to her, and comparing her to Nausicaa. She asked him whether Nausicaa was a batsman or a bowler, as she knew for a fact that his name was not in Wisden. But when the silly owl began to simplify himself, he wished he hadn’t spoke. She knocked three fours and two sixes off him—all in one over. By crum! didn’t she make hay! As for Jack Mason, he’s got a blind sort o’ shove behind point off a rising ball that she don’t approve of, whilst Charlie Fry’s bowling action is so darned ugly that I don’t much fancy him.”

“Second bell,” said the little parson. “We’d better cut.”

“Yes, curse it,” said the great bowler with a[132] groan. “’Got to be rolling ’em up all the afternoon at ninety in the shade. Wicket concrete, and two men going as they please. Bowlers have to come from heaven, I say, or they’d simply kick. ’Wants a blooming archangel to be a bowler. Poor devils! What are the sins of their fathers that some men should be born bowlers?”

“Evolution teaches us,” said the little parson with resonant solemnity, “that when a man’s forbears have been for generations in the habit of fielding really bad, dropping catches, slow pick-up, stopping ’em with their boot, wild returns, fumbling, failing to back up, real downright infernal blood-coloured idleness, and so forth—that poor bloke is likely to be born a bowler. Nature will avenge itself, you know.”

“’Must have been several Keys and Martin Hawkes in our family, then, at one time or another,” said Charlie. Here however a ray of hope came to him. “Of course,” said he, “your men’ll declare when they get about three hundred.”

“Well, what would you do,” said I, “if you’d not got a ha’porth o’ bowling, against a batting side like Hickory’s?”

“Cert’nly declare,” said the bowler with wonderful conviction. “Great folly if you don’t. Always the unexpected that happens at cricket,[133] don’t you know. ’Might absolutely scuttle us as our men’ll be tired as the Ten blooming Tribes, and pretty well as sick.”

“Well,” said I, “I daresay we shall declare—at half-past six.”

As the umpires were already out, there was no time left in which the case might be considered in all its aspects. It was a memorable sight when Hickory took the field two minutes later. The assembly was still greater than before. Little Clumpton, always warm favourites, since they relied on purely local men, had had the might of their achievement noised abroad. 165 for one wicket against Hickory’s formidable side was a morning’s work that had sent the majority of those present into the seventh heaven of enthusiasm.

Would Halliday get his hundred? Would Oldknow get his fifty? The cheers that greeted these heroes when they came out of the pavilion was something to cherish in the memory. They marched to the crease with stately unconcern. Their apparent unconsciousness of the clamour they had excited bordered on the sublime.

They began with extreme caution. The first few overs were a repetition of their morning’s methods. There was no hurry for runs. The Ancient cocked one under his leg for two, and the Captain stole a single. This was the sum total of their scoring[134] during the first ten minutes. Was Halliday never going to get his hundred? He still required one. The fielding was so keen and the bowling so straight that there still seemed an element of uncertainty about it. This assumed a palpable shape a moment later, when every man in the slips, point, the bowler, the wicket-keeper, and heaven knows who besides, yelled at the pitch of their lungs.

“How’s that?”

One could almost hear the great heart of the crowd beating through the terribly portentous silence, that so respectfully awaited the umpire’s verdict. The Optimist and I bent forward in our eagerness. Could it be that Halliday was to have the cup dashed from his lips in this manner? We despondently remembered that it was nine years since a man had scored a century for Little Clumpton v. Hickory. Suddenly the wicket-keeper threw down the ball with an impatient gesture. The crisis was passed. Halliday was given in. He cut Charlie’s next ball like a knife to the boundary. The scene that ensued is not to be described. Veterans cheered; strong men adjourned for beer. The best bowler in England to be collared to this tune! Little Clumpton 192 for 1. Halliday, not out, 103. And that this moment might be furnished with every joy on which the great British[135] Public dotes, a small boy in the exuberance of the hour, thought well to fall from a tall tree wherein he was perched, and delighted the populace by showing it how easily he could break his collar-bone.

By cocking T. S. M. under his leg for another two, the Ancient completed his fifty in the following over. Runs were beginning to come as they pleased. Each batsman had satisfied his dreams. He could now afford to take liberties and play to the crowd a bit. The Captain did; the Ancient didn’t. It sums up the essential difference between the two. The Captain began to talk to T. S. M. He leapt out and hit him out of the ground for six. T. S. M. immediately went off, obedient, doubtless, to a peremptory command that appeared to proceed from the recesses of the ladies’ tent.

H. C., the lion-hearted, still continued to hurl them down at his best pace. But it was manifestly not his day. The Captain, with his score at 112, was palpably missed at the wicket. Charlie also beat the Ancient twice with successive balls, and occasionally knocked at that little batsman’s ribs, no doubt to remind him that he was becoming a nuisance. The Ancient, however, merely drew a long breath to assure himself that it was not a compound fracture, blinked reflectively, took a new guard, and continued as before. Two hundred[136] went up, and still no separation. Matters were growing ominous. Men were heard to inquire what was the record score in Little Clumpton v. Hickory, by whom was it made, and when? It appeared that Hickory’s 503 for nine, in the pre-declaration days of 1887, held it. Would it be eclipsed? Runs still came at their own sweet will. With his score at 133, Halliday was missed off Charlie for the second time by the unhappy wicket-keeper. The crowd grew vigorous in its observations, and began to applaud the poor beggar every time he handled the ball. Whenever the British Public swarm, they invariably bring their manners with them.

The appearance of the “telegraph” was fast becoming a thing of beauty. Ten followed ten without the slightest hesitation. The bowling began to exhibit signs of getting used up. Charlie, still wicketless, had gone off, whilst that crowning glory of a good side, its fielding, was not taking itself quite so seriously as it did earlier in the day. But neither the Optimist nor I were, perhaps, as whole-hearted as we might have been in our enthusiasm. Our thoughts would keep straying to Miss Grace. Why had we not been born county cricketers? It was bitterness for me to reflect that I was already out for seven, and that my own impetuosity had caused me to forfeit a chance for which so[137] many sighed in vain. As for the Optimist, he was conscious of certain rather pronounced weaknesses in his style, which he was too old now to correct.

“Perhaps she hasn’t seen you bat, though?” said I consolingly.

“She ain’t, that’s certain,” said he wearily; “and if I’m lucky, she never will!”

Miss Grace was now returning. We saw the assured figure of that young person, the perfection of finely curved and elegant strength, emerge from the interior of the ladies’ tent. Two very young men stepped out after her. Miss Grace turned round quickly, and although what she said was brief, it was apparently to the point, as the pair of them went back again without any delay whatever.

As Miss Grace came along the confines of the boundary to rejoin us, swinging her gloves as she walked, an act of self-denial denoted that here was no ordinary girl. The bowler was in the act of delivering, and she was compelled to cross the screen at his end. The ordinary girl would have been quite unable to resist the fascination of passing behind the bowler’s arm, and thereby delaying the game until she had gone on her way rejoicing in her crime. Miss Grace, however impossible it may actually seem, waited while the bowler delivered[138] the ball, and afterwards ran across the screen as hard as she could in order to be well clear of his arm by the time he was ready to send down the next. The Optimist saw this also, and is prepared, I understand, to affirm it on oath in the presence of witnesses. And the pair of us will no doubt one day persuade the authorities at Newnham to recognise the pious character of her act by erecting a stained glass window to her honourable memory, even at the risk of causing that home of the higher learning to build a chapel in which to put it.

She was soon up beside us again, a pretty healthy-looking anger seeming to emphasise her charms.

“267 for one, Grace,” said the scorer; “Halliday not out, 169. Oldknow, not out, 72. Oh, and another four; that makes Halliday 173. 270 up, boy.”

“Awfully obliged to you, old chap,” said Miss Grace politely, as she took the score-book from the Optimist. Her self-control really was remarkable, but then women do claim to have more of it than men.

“What sort of a time did they give you in there?” asked the Optimist. He always had a considerable temerity of his own. A thorough-going optimist needs it, of course.

[139]“Pretty bad,” said Miss Grace, with a distinctly blasé air. “One girl said that Charlie must have an awful lot of enthusiasm, ’cause he kept running about as hard as he could just for fun, while everybody else was looking at him. Oh, some of ’em have a very pretty wit, I can tell you. But if Hickory’s idea of humour is 271 for one, I wish they’d try to be a bit serious sometimes, ’cause in my idea that sort o’ fun’s not funny at all.”

“’Tis for us, I think,” said I.

“Very low form of amusement,” said Grace judicially.

Here the game afforded us a new diversion. The dauntless Halliday, whom good fortune had now rendered absolutely reckless, lashed out for all he was worth at a ball much too short to drive. It went spinning up a dizzy height midway between mid-off and cover-point, in which positions the youthful T. S. M. and Carteret were fielding respectively.

“At last!” sighed poor Miss Grace.

She was just a little bit premature, however. Being between them, both men immediately started for the catch; then each observing the other coming, both stopped together and stood stock still, each politely saying “Your ball!” at the same moment, whilst the ball in question dropped harmlessly to earth. The great British Public[140] rivalled Swift for pungency that minute. Poor Miss Grace, however, grew positively white.

“I shall give ’em up,” she said.

There was soon a new matter to absorb the attention of the speculative. Would Halliday make 200? It was a feat that had still to be accomplished in Little Clumpton v. Hickory. But as this is an age of record-breaking, it was quite expected of our captain that he should do something to maintain the traditions of his generation. He rose to the occasion. Hitting out, without favour and without fear, he soon set all doubts at rest. A strong off-drive gave him his second century.

“Have a cigarette, Miss Trentham,” said I, passing her the case. She was not a young person who gave one the impression of being greatly troubled with “nerves”; but it was plain that 309 for one wicket had thrown the few she had into a state of open mutiny.

“Don’t smoke,” Miss Grace said.

“Should rather have thought you would,” said I mischievously.

“No,” said she with great sobriety; “it’s a bad thing for condition. Besides, I’ve four brothers to consider. And when they do get stale, I don’t like ’em to say it’s my fault. I always try to do the straight thing by ’em, and set ’em a good example.”

[141]“They invariably follow it, of course?”

“Well, no,” said Miss Grace reluctantly, “not always. But you know,” she added quickly, “they’re really pretty decent sorts when you get to know their little ways. If you feed ’em well and fetch their slippers for ’em, and you let ’em have breakfast when they like, and you don’t lecture ’em too much, you can get ’em to do almost anything. And if Archie and Charlie have got anything big on, they’re just as good as gold. Hullo, Charlie’s going on again. Why don’t he go on permanently?”

CHARLIE’S second ball was one of his best breakbacks. The Captain in his carelessness played a bit outside it. Back went his off stick. At last the great partnership was dissolved. 312 for two, last man, 204. 301 had been added for the wicket, which beat by 37 the record partnership of Barclay and Perkins in 1882. Barclay’s 178 made on that occasion, the previous individual best, was also superseded. As the hero ran into the pavilion, the crowd simply rose at him.

The Pessimist succeeded. He was very correct, watchful, and resourceful. Charlie smashed a yorker at him to begin with, but the Pessimist had heard of such things before. It takes more than a common yorker to discompose a county man. Presently the Ancient so far forgot himself as to indulge in a drive for four.

“Has he got his fifty yet?” I asked.

[143]“He’s made 98, the little horror!” said Grace indignantly. “I wonder if he ever will get out.”

“He’s all right,” said I. “He’s quite enjoying it.”

A spell of very quiet play followed. Charlie’s wicket provoked him to bowl five maidens in succession to the Pessimist. But his sister was so keen a critic that this proceeding mightily displeased her.

“Fast bowlers,” said she, “are all big hearts and brute force—no intellect at all you know. They’ve got about as many brains as a giddy old crocodile. What’s Charlie bowling like that for? Can’t he see that he’s just helping that man to play himself in? Why don’t he chuck him a ‘tice’ or a full toss, or something that’s downright bad—anything to make him have a go before he gets his eye in.”

Ere long a thunderclap informed Hickory that yet another century had been scored against them that humiliating afternoon. The Ancient in defiance of all criticism had had the audacity to complete his hundred; and I for one believe most firmly that Hickory never would have got him out had not the Fates interfered on their behalf. For as he attempted one of his favourite short ones directly afterwards, A. H., fielding deep mid-off, dashed in like a deer, gathered the ball, and hurled[144] down the Ancient’s wicket with the energy of despair, whilst that unfortunate was still cavorting a yard outside the crease. Oldknow had played a great innings, but——no, the Ancient is too sound a bat and far too good a fellow for a Little Clumpton man to say rude things about his play. Miss Grace, a thorough-going Hickoryite, had no such scruples.

“Wasn’t that a bit of lovely fielding,” said she, drawing a deep breath. “I do like to see ’em field like that; and it’s Oldknow, is it? Helped himself to a hundred and one. I call that cheek. If he could only bat I shouldn’t care.”

“Genius covers a multitude of sins,” said I.

“It’s got to, if he’s a genius,” said Miss Grace; “but if that’s genius, give me something common. Bad taste and all that, I know; but that chap worries me. Besides, if he’s a genius, why don’t he wear long hair and look intense, like Paderewski. That might carry things off a bit, and keep people from looking at his batting, don’t you think?”

“By Jove,” said I, “very good idea. I’ll suggest it to him.”

The Humourist, known as Merryweather in private life, came out to the Pessimist. Cheers greeted his appearance. The crowd knew him of old. He was the most uncertain bat that ever put[145] on pads. Oh, but if he only stayed! One Gilbert Jessop had to take second place if Merryweather only stayed. True, he only did stay about five times a season, but as no one knew the occasion he was likely to honour with his presence for any lengthened period, the apparition of his six feet three of smiling insolence always sent a thrill through the assembly.

“Bloomin’ ’ard and bloomin’ ’igh and bloomin’ often,” was his game. He was a man who carried few theological ideas, but it was understood that his conception of Paradise was a place of short boundaries and unlimited lob-bowling. He had a partiality for the Park, as it fulfilled the first of these conditions.

“Isn’t this your Slogger?” asked Miss Grace.

“Now that slogging’s at a premium,” said I, “we’d call him a fine, free, forcing batsman.”

“I wish these boundaries weren’t so jolly small,” said Miss Grace with an apprehensive eye. “I don’t like to see a man his inches come in smiling.”

The first ball the Humourist received he sent humming over our coach into a cornfield at the back. During the interval in which Hickory endeavoured to recover it, the remarkable silence of the Optimist attracted my attention. It was so[146] foreign to his usual habit of kind discursiveness that I felt there must be some grave reason for it. He had not uttered a word for forty minutes.

“Brightside, when do you go in?” said I.

“Next but one,” he sighed.

This was a sufficient explanation. The man was suffering. He was determined to be cheerful, but could not disguise the pallor underneath his tan. He drummed his fingers nervously on his knees; a restlessness had taken him; there was a wild look in his eye. Seizing a moment when Miss Grace was occupied in evolving from the analysis the number of runs Charlie had paid for his solitary wicket the Optimist whispered,—

“Shouldn’t care a bit, you know, if she wasn’t here. I was never properly coached at school, you know. I will draw away from leg balls, you know. If Charlie bowls any, you know, sure as death, I shall retire towards the umpire. Do you think she’ll be able to tell that from here?”

“They say Abel does the same,” said I evasively.

“And I’ve got no wrist, you know. Can’t cut a bit, you know. Have to sort o’ shove ’em, you know, with my arms and shoulders.”

“Quite a coincidence,” said I, “for they always say that the Old Man does all his cutting with his arms and shoulders.”

[147]“And I’m always scraping forward and feeling for ’em. Get so beastly flurried if I wait, that I’m certain to be bowled.”

“Well,” said I, “it’s the sort of wicket on which you can play forward to anything. Hard as concrete.”

“But she’s fair death on style,” said the poor old Optimist. “She’s got such a terrible high standard, don’t you know? Asked her this morning what she thought of A. H.’s batting. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘Archie’s a pretty fair rustic bat.’”

“She may take a much higher view of yours,” said I. “Women are that funny, you don’t know when you’ve got ’em. Shouldn’t be a bit surprised if she don’t fall in with your style on the spot, for really I’ve seen worse.”

“Not much,” groaned the poor old Optimist.

Here the voice of this unflinching critic, who really had been born half a century too late, such an ornament she would have been to Blackwood and the Quarterly in their palmy days, put an end to our painful conversation. As the field were returning with the ball, she bent over the wheels to tell her brother Charlie, in a not inaudible undertone:

“Forty-three overs, twelve maidens, eighty-nine runs, one wicket. Sounds good don’t it. ’Nother wicket’d be a rather nice idea. Trying bowling[148] left hand Charlie,—couldn’t be worse than Tommy’s plough-and-harrow-agricultural-produce anyhow.”

The Harrow captain hearing this was observed to display some colour, and march hastily out of earshot. But a worse fate awaited him on his arrival at the crease.

The Humourist, having hit his first ball for six in his playful way, proceeded to treat his second with a similar levity by lifting that over the pavilion. This, however, did not appeal in the least to Harrow’s sense of humour. Therefore, when its captain pitched his third ball ridiculously short, the gentle Humourist had time to wait and sweep it round to the square-leg boundary. But it was not here that the youthful Tom’s humiliation ended. The Humourist walked sedately down the wicket to the bowler’s end, and proceeded to pat down the turf near the bowler’s foot.

“’Serves him jolly well right,” said Miss Grace hotly, “it’ll teach these public school cubs not to be so jolly cheeky.”

But here the spirit of compassion suddenly appeared in the victim’s sister. Her eyes showed that she also resented the liberties thus taken with a member of her family. “I tell you what though,” she added as an afterthought; “it strikes me that that Merryweather of yours is a pretty big piece[149] of a brute. Poor old Tommy! I wish he’d bowl him.”

For some little time, however, the Humourist went on his way rejoicing. He swiped two of Charlie’s best, high over the head of cover-point, in the most amazing manner, and it was only when in the exuberance of his heart that he tried to serve a yorker in a similar fashion, that the honour of the Trenthams was avenged. The playful Humourist had included two sixes and three fours in his twenty-eight.

“Why don’t Halliday declare,” said the poor Optimist, overborne with the knowledge that he must go forthwith and put his pads on.

“Yes, why don’t he?” said Miss Grace.

“We’ve not got a bit of bowling,” said I.

“But our batting’s not very clever, you know,” said Miss Grace enticingly.

“Really,” said I. “But then some of us looked in this morning’s Sportsman, and from our point of view it didn’t read pretty.”

“But what price the bowling?” said Miss Grace more coaxingly than ever. “Notts is almost too awful, an’ Yorkshire’s a bit fluffy on a plumb pitch. As for Household Brigade and Gentlemen o’ Cheshire, I wouldn’t mind an hour or two myself of their sort—just about my weight. Do hope Halliday’ll declare. Great error if he don’t. Our[150] men are so tired, too; you might scuttle us like fun.”

“Or we mightn’t,” said I callously. “And I can’t help thinking that we mightn’t. Halliday will be well advised to go for the record. Of course, if we’d got some bowling, we’d be at you like a shot.”

The Captain was plainly of my mind, for he gave no sign, and the unhappy Optimist, much against his inclination, climbed down from the box, and wended his way to the pavilion.

“Why did Jack put me in so early?” his agonised expression said. “He knows I always like to go in tenth.”

The General Nuisance reigned in the stead of the Humourist now. Though the General Nuisance might be mistaken for an utter fiend in private life, his batting on hard grounds was angelic. People who had not to support the personal acquaintance of the Honourable John Blenkinsop-Comfort were often heard to inquire why he had never got his “blue,” and why his exquisite batting was not more generally recognised by the authorities. It is no desire of mine to betray anybody’s confidences, but I feel sure the authorities must have had very excellent reasons. No doubt, as in the melancholy case of Miss Grace and Harrow School, they felt that somewhere they were bound to draw the line.

[151]“390 up, boy!” called Miss Grace. The next over she broke into mirth of a most undisguised character. “Toddles is going on,” she said. “I’ll put that in my diary.”

Forthwith producing a small book from her pocket, she inquired for the date, and placed this pleasant fact in the annals of the world.

“Well, there’s one thing to be said for Toddles’ bowling,” said its historian. “It can’t be called derogatory to his cloth. It’s just the stuff a parson should roll up.”

“Why?” I asked in my innocence.

“There’s no devil in it,” said Miss Grace.

“Oh!” I said. I subsided.

The Reverend Mr. Elphinstone’s deliveries were slow, simple-minded toss-ups of the most innocuous kind. The Pessimist and the General Nuisance having helped themselves to twenty-seven in two overs, the patentee and sole manufacturer of this sort of bowling was incontinently shunted for Captain George, who gallantly went on with lobs. The happiness of that intrepid officer’s sister was good to observe.

“Dear simple soul,” she said. “That’s just old George. So ingenuous you know. Look at him, rolling up his sleeves and setting out the field. If this ground’s big enough to hold old George, he’s altered lately. Now watch, he’s beginning his[152] run. Oh, hang it, I’ve left my kodak on the billiard table. What lovely sights you do see when you haven’t got your kodak! Old George really ought to keep his bowling in a show, you know. It’s so sudden, so unexpected! It reminds me of those ‘Odes in Contribution to the Jolly Song, of the Jolly Something,’ that the Guv’nor’s got. I say, do look at him. There he goes—the dear old boy!—a hop, a stride, another hop, another stride, a double jump, and then he chucks up the innocentest cuckoo that you ever saw.”

His first ball came into collision with a tankard of beer in the refreshment booth; but it would be kinder to draw the veil of reticence around the gallant Captain’s trundling.

It was now something after five, the Little Clumpton score was 440 for four wickets, and the bowling of proud Hickory was dead, and longing for a quiet funeral. To see this haughty eleven, footsore, weary, limp, and very cross, not troubling to save the boundary, failing to back up, keeping the bowler waiting while they crossed over, was a sermon in itself on the instability of human triumphs and the cussedness of cricket. Five members of their side had totalled 727 between them the previous day, but now those five in common with their less gifted colleagues, were compelled to expiate their severities in as vigorous[153] a leather-hunting as ever a team submitted to. And, to aggravate their pains, they knew quite well that on this occasion, Little Clumpton’s so-called bowling was an object of derision. The sight of these world-famed batsmen limping round the boundary, and repeatedly extracting the ball from a sharp-tongued and not too sympathetic multitude, was perilously like one of the ironies of life strained to the point of pathos. But as I have no desire to wallow in the pathetic, leaving that to my intellectual betters, let me touch as lightly as I can on the tragedy of Hickory. Let it suffice that the Pessimist and the General Nuisance remained at the wickets cutting, driving, leg hitting, and showing off their wrist work till stumps and the match were drawn. As a new record had been set up in Little Clumpton v. Hickory, I think it justifiable to reproduce the full score as it appeared in the Sportsman the following morning. The bowling analysis is withheld, however, out of compassion for Miss Grace, who took the matter so very much to heart, that a young person less sound in her constitution, and less right thinking in her mental habitudes, might perhaps have kept her bed in consequence for several days. As I have carefully copied this score out of my commonplace book, its correctness is guaranteed.

[154]

Hickory did not bat.

I  WENT home, and passed an unquiet night. I like to think myself a person of a sturdy unemotional habit whom neither men nor affairs can discompose; but I’m certain that every time I fell into a doze, I was dreaming of brown holland. And when I lay awake I was thinking of brown holland. It is very chastening when the proud are smitten in their self-esteem. Hitherto I had held my invincibility to be quite glorious. The most fanciful dressing of the hair, the most fearful wonderful “creation,” the most ingratiating small talk, I delighted to defy. It pleased me to think, that I had a mind as much above cut, colour, carriage and address, and whole magazines of blandishment, as any this side professed misogyny. And I was reasonably gratified with this high behaviour. Be sure it is no little thing for a young and pretty eligible bachelor to look, to admit, and yet to remain impervious. There was some consensus of[156] opinion I believe amongst the manias of the county that young Mr. Dimsdale really ought to settle down. You should know that young Mr. Dimsdale having completed his education by a rather liberal course of globe-trotting, had come home at last to play the squire at his late father’s little place in the country. Therefore his late father’s little place was desiring a mistress; his late father’s little income was clamouring to be spent. His late father had been in trade it is true—he had boiled soap, to be precise; Dimsdale’s Dirt Defier, don’t you know? But young Mr. Dimsdale himself was so much the thing, that these charitable ladies would never be able to forgive themselves if through any fault of theirs he married something “impossible”—an actress say, or one of those dreadful pushing pig-sticking Americans!

I struck a match, and looked at the time. Twenty minutes past two. I sat up in bed, and said confidentially to the bedroom furniture:

“Damn brown holland!”

It must have been somewhat embarrassing for the bedroom furniture I know, but then the thing was getting serious. I was beginning to fear that something had gone wrong with the works.

Now the case would not have been quite so singular had it been a question of a brand-new gown from Paris. But a humble countryfied[157] brown holland! Ah! but was it quite so humble and so countryfied? Wasn’t there a sweeping decision in its build that had “Redfern” on it as legibly as the box in which it came. In fact, the more I meditated on this unpretentious brown holland, the more imposing did it grow. By Jove! it was not half so insignificant as it seemed. In no time I had discovered so many potential charms in its deceitful simplicity, that presently its individuality was merged in that of its wearer. Redfern—good people—beauty no end—weekly refusals—earls, etc.—great cricketing family—brother going out with Stoddart—father awful big pot—no earthly—who was I—silly ass—soap-boiler’s son—not even invited to play for the county—out for seven—couldn’t bat for nuts—why didn’t I go to sleep—brown holland—damn brown holland—sleep so much more desirable—what price her eyes—what was the name of that complexion—wonder if my batting was likely to come on—Archie a pretty fair rustic bat—wonder why all girls didn’t wear brown holland—Zingari colours didn’t look so dusty with that hair—was I ever going to sleep—who said brown holland—should be sure to see her again—Hickory Rectory was just a nice walk—why wasn’t I a county cricketer—rather a pretty name Grace—suited her too! I fell into another doze and dreamt of going[158] in first with Halliday to bat against Middlesex at Lords. I was so nervous and excited that I could hardly walk. When I asked the umpire in a hoarse voice for my guard, and he turned his face towards me, I saw with horrified surprise that he wore brown holland underneath his white coat, and that he had the voice and face of a lady. When she said, “Your bat’s horribly wobbly; Charlie’ll get through that like fun,” the shock was too great to be borne, and I woke up in a sweat.

I was such a dismal dog and my appetite was so delicate, that I breakfasted on tea and toast, and actually elected to peruse a stern indictment of the Government’s Foreign Policy in the Times rather than the Sportsman’s account of yesterday’s county matches. I was sick of cricket. It was such an unsatisfactory game. Besides, it was of no service to the liver. I was certain that that important organ had gone wrong again. Must have advice about it, and do more riding. Sell my bats or burn them, and devote myself to polo. Capital idea!

I was sipping my tea reflectively, and tracing the strange resemblance of its colour to the complexion of the young person in brown holland, when the General Nuisance obtruded his hateful presence through the open window, as his wont[159] was, without any ceremony whatever. He was reeking of self-satisfaction and tobacco smoke.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said he, casting his lighted cigarette on the carpet in a way that promised to ignite it. Pouring himself out a cup of coffee, without waiting to be invited, he said:

“Look pretty chippy this morning, my son. Still fretting about that l.b.w.?”

“Drink your coffee and cut,” said I, as impolitely as I could.

“Want to be alone, eh?” said he. “Why that’s a symptom. Let’s see your tongue. And I’d better feel your pulse.”

“You’ll probably feel my boot,” said I.

“Very prettily expressed,” said the General Nuisance. Thereon he seated himself on a corner of the breakfast-table, and seemed certain to capsize the bacon-dish every time he swung his legs. “Most incisive and direct.”

“Will be,” said I, not so irrelevantly as it may appear.

“I’ll prescribe for your disease,” said he.

“You can go to hell,” said I.

“Well,” said he suavely, “my prescription is in that direction too. I want you to go and drown yourself. You’re in love.”

“Who told you?” I shouted.

How singular it was that I had not had the[160] faintest suspicion till that moment that love was the name of my disease! But when the General Nuisance clapped a name upon my malady, not for an instant did I doubt him.

“Hard that a man of your fine presence should suffer from hallucinations,” said that glibly hateful person. “Must feel pretty squiffy. You go and drown yourself, my pilgrim. Quite the nicest death in summer. Water beautifully warm. Besides, you’ve got a pretext in your l.b.w. Jury’ll bring in a ‘temporarily insane’ without any coarse remarks. Now then, go away and die. And what an awfully swagger corpse you’d make. They’re not always so well nourished and full of blood, you ostentatious idiot.”

“Who told you I was in love?” said I.

“Your looks,” said he.

“Are they very descriptive?” said I apprehensively.

“Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackeray,” said he, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Decent girl though.”

“Decent!” said I, clenching my fist in my enthusiasm; “she’s the magnificentest girl you ever saw!”

“Strange,” said he, “how all the objects of our affection suffer from superlatives.”

“She’s not an object,” said I fiercely, “she’s a[161] perfect angel. If you knew her, you’d say she was too good to live. And such eyes too!”

“Oh, Granny, what big ears you’ve got!” said he; then dropping his tone, “you excite my fears, old chap. ’Devilish cut up to find your nervous system in such a disorganized condition.”

“Don’t spill your phrases all over the place,” said I. “You’re not in Parliament yet.”

“You’re putting up for Elysium, I see,” he said. “Don’t think you’ll get in though. Rival candidates too strong.”

“Who?” I said faintly.

“Right Honourable Earl Boughey for one,” he said.

“He can’t bat though,” I said.

“His acres compensate.”

“She’s not that kind of girl,” I said quickly.

“They never are—until you get left! Then there’s the cherished, respectable Optimist.”

“Poor old soul, he’s got no earthly!”

“How sad! But sit on your pity and keep it snug. It’ll be needed for another, or woman has changed since my time. Don’t you know that every sanguine temperament in the shire is similarly bent? She’s at home the first Monday and the third Friday for the purpose of dispatching ’em. Does ’em in detachments. As Archie pathetically says, ‘To a peaceable and quiet mind[162] the slaughter is distressing.’ And she’s going to be a sister to ’em all. Archie says he can’t sleep o’ nights for thinking of his poor relations.”

“Don’t care,” said I doggedly; “she’s A 1.”

“Rather liberal-minded too.”

“The best women always are.”

“Out of the mouths of babes! But this’ll gladden you. Middlesex man, stylish, dashing bat, fair change bowler, irreproachable field, is the dark horse. Were you only he, the deity might deign. But as you are merely a club-man with ambitions, be advised, and go and pack your brain in ice. For these cases the cold water cure has the highest testimonials. I’m speaking plain, because it pains me to see Joyous Imbecility riding for a fall. So long as it tumbles on its head there’s no harm done. Besides, the vanity that lives there sometimes gets a jog. But if it drops on top of its emotions, it’s been known to write a book, and that, my pilgrim, in the interests of humanity I feel it my duty to discountenance.”

The General Nuisance having disposed of his piece of news, and having trampled on my feelings as far as considerations for his personal safety would permit, dismounted from the table in a way that involved the overturning of the hot-water dish on to my fox terrier, lying inoffensively on the[163] hearthrug. Thereon he took his leave, professing deep solicitude for my deplorable condition, and departed to advertise it to the world.

Poets always lead one to understand that the tender passion is an ecstatic, quick-breathing sort of thing. But in this present case of mine it simply made me morose and brooding, with a distinct tendency to put me off my ordinary game. Loss of appetite, a general lassitude, moodiness, abstraction, and an instability of purpose that would not let me do any one thing for more than five minutes at a time, were a few of my symptoms on this memorable morning. I loafed about the fields throughout the forenoon with no other companion than the Rubaiyat of Mr. Rudyard Kipling—I am sure I beg your pardon, I mean of course, the Rudyard Kipling of Mr. Omar Kháyyám—for once despising sporting literature, as I had discovered that sport itself was such a hollow, unsatisfying thing. On coming back to lunch I found that my sister Mary had returned from town. To my shame be it said I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Mary is a most sympathetic person, but at the same time I was craving just now for a life of solitude.

“Had a good time?” said I, immediately on the top of the fraternal ceremony.

“Yes, and no,” said Mary, in a way that the best[164] girls have. Yes, to imply that she really had had a good time; no, to suggest that she was not insensible to her severance from a loving brother. A mere man would have been incapable of summing up the exigencies of the moment in this wholly admirable fashion.

“But, Ricky,” said she, placing her hands on my shoulders and looking into my face with tremendously embarrassing intentness, “what’s the matter with you? You look quite old and weary. You didn’t get a duck yesterday.”

“I only got seven,” said I, seeking to creep out on a subterfuge.

“Yes, I bought a Sportsman,” said Mary. “Leg before’s very annoying, I know, but you mustn’t let it wreck your health.”

“But mine was the only single figure,” said I, to still further disarm suspicion.

But all this time Mary’s penetrating glance had never left my dissembling countenance; and when she said, in a rather downright manner, “Look here, Ricky, I don’t think it’s that at all,” I was not a bit surprised by her profundity, although it did not prevent me looking guilty.

“They’ve not invited you to play against Somerset next week?” she asked, with bated breath; “because if they have I can understand it.”

“No,” I said, “they’ve not.”

[165]“Then I think they’re very mean,” said Mary; “but what is the matter, Ricky?”

Now Mary had a way with her that I never could resist. Besides here is a difference between the sexes. We have only one way of getting to know anything we want to know, and that is blunt demand; but a woman has five thousand ways or more, mostly indirect, to make the Sphinx unfold its bosom. Therefore it was a rule of mine to accept the inevitable straight away in the case of Mary. Sooner or later she was bound to catch me napping, besides, an early concession spared us both a vast amount of trouble.

“Do you know Laura Trentham?” said I desperately.

“Oh, yes,” said Mary.

“Wouldn’t you call her no end of a nice girl?”

“She’s a very dear girl,” said Mary warmly. “Quite one of the nicest girls I know—if she wouldn’t talk slang.”

“Slang!” said I. “Why, does she talk slang?”

“Dreadfully,” said Mary, in that tone of high reproof that the best sisters are so fond of. “Dreadfully, Ricky. Isn’t it a pity?”

“Awful,” said I. “S’pose slangy women are awfully beastly.”

“They’re outrées,” said Mary. “Besides, men like it.”

[166]“Don’t think they know what slang is,” said I. “S’pose it’s the same as the split infinitive—sort o’ thing that everybody likes to jolly well jaw about and don’t know what it is.”

“My dear Ricky,” said Mary sternly. Her eye fairly flashed with the Higher Culture, therefore I hastened to dismiss a subject on which she had such strong opinions.

“I met Laura Trentham yesterday, at the Hickory match, you know,” said I guiltily.

“Hadn’t we better begin lunch?” said Mary. “Travelling’s made me so hungry.”

It was well for Mary that her patience had no limits, for during that meal I consumed incredible quantities of this invaluable article. However, I felt perhaps a thought more cheerful for the energy and colour of my language. But Mary’s last word was:

“Ricky, I’m so sorry that Laura Trentham does talk slang.”

I lost no time in seeking the open air. Indoors I breathed with difficulty, and was, moreover, ridiculously restless. I wandered aimlessly about the fields of sunshine, without noting in the least the direction that I took. I meandered across blistering meadows to the neighbouring village of Nowhere-in-Particular. A singularly disordered mind was my one companion. And such was its condition[167] that I neither heeded my direction nor the landmarks by the way. Therefore, when in the course of two hours’ rambling it suddenly occurred to me that it would be as well to observe where I was, and set my face for home, I should not have been very surprised to find that I had strolled off the map of England. Where was I? There was a low hedge directly ahead. Beyond that I could indistinctly see, trees being intermingled with them, glass-houses, out-houses, and an ivy-grown, ancient manor-house. Whose place was this? Next instant I shook with hollow laughter at myself. It was Hickory Rectory, Miss Grace’s home. This was really too preposterous. The ivy-grown arrangement just in front was Hickory Rectory for all that. And the family were still at home, and apparently engaged in their principal vocation. For even as I stood girding at my own absurdity, a voice came from the other side the hedge to this effect: “Grace, if you will keep covering the sticks every time with your confounded skirt, you’ll be out petticoat before.”

“Oh, shall I!” said the audacious person thus addressed. “If you can’t bowl me, you’d better bowl for catches and get me caught. Put Toddles on. He might get me collared in the long-field like anything.”

Although I was still applying cynical laughter to[168] my infernal folly, I was quite prepared to seize the opportunity of seeing great men in private life, and that other surpassing member of their family showing them how things should be done. Therefore I found myself gazing with both eyes over the hedge on to the Rectory lawn. It was a single wicket match. Grace herself was batting. A. H. was bowling slow breaks; Captain George was keeping wicket; Elphinstone was in the country; T. S. M., H. C., and Carteret were all disposed on the leg-side; whilst an old, foxey-looking individual was acting in the responsible capacity of umpire. I had not been there a minute ere Miss Grace, in attempting a tremendous blind swipe right off her middle over the cucumber frame at deep square-leg, was saved by her skirt from being clean bowled.

“How’s that?” cried A. H., lustily.

“Not hout!” cried the umpire, in a tone that plainly told A. H. what he, the umpire, thought of him as a man and a gentleman.

“Very good decision, Biffin,” said Miss Grace, calmly patting down the turf to show that the ball had turned a bit. However, Nemesis waited on Miss Grace next ball. With another mighty swipe she fetched a real good one round like lightning, and the youthful T. S. M., fielding short-leg, jumping up, effected a wonderful one-handed catch.

[169]“Well, what a fluke!” cried Miss Grace; “that would have been the winning hit.”

“But isn’t,” said Elphinstone, alias Toddles, cheerfully; “and Surrey have beaten Middlesex by two runs. First defeat of the champion county. Oh, Stoddy, why weren’t you steadier?”

“Yes, why weren’t you steadier, Stoddy?” said Carteret.

“’Cause I didn’t think there was anybody in this parish who could catch anything after yesterday’s exhibition,” said the famous Middlesex batsman dejectedly.

“What’s the next fixture in the Middlesex list?” asked Captain George.

“Middlesex v. Gloucestershire at Cheltenham,” said Miss Grace. “Same sides. Let’s toss for innings.”

“You’ve got a man more than we, though,” said T. S. M.

“As you play for Harrow, Tommy, you count two you know,” said Miss Grace.

“Hullo, there’s Dimsdale here,” cried H. C., as his eye lit on me. “He’s just the man we want for Gloucester. Go round, Dimsdale, to the gate.”

A minute later I was on the Rectory lawn, and preparing to engage in my first county match.

“As it’s Gloucestershire,” said George the[170] kindly, “somebody’ll have to represent the Old Man. Now Grace herself is the only one with any pretensions to do that. Suppose Middlesex swaps her for me?”

“Ripping good idea!” said that celebrated person eagerly. “That’s stunning! Biffin, just go and fetch me that red and yellow cap, while I go out and toss with Mr. Stoddart.”

MIDDLESEX won the toss, and elected to go in. Archie put on his pads and went in first, on a distinctly creditable wicket. Grace captained Gloucestershire, of course.

“As Roberts is suffering from a strain,” said she, “and Charlie Townsend’s lost his length, and Jessop’s a bit on the short side at present, I think I’d better try myself to start with. Besides, I can get old Archie out.”

She began with very slow, high-tossed, half volleys. Considering that Archie was one of the most powerful hitters in England, this proceeding on the part of W. G. savoured of cool cheek.

“These are no use, you know,” said the batsman, driving one terrifically hard along the ground for a big single.

“You hit ’em and see,” said the wily bowler. “If you do, Archie, sure as a gun you’ll put ’em through the library windows.”

[172]Grace had shown her hand with a vengeance. The library windows were sufficiently far away to be likely to receive one of Archie’s best hits. It was plain that this knowledge rendered the batsman very uneasy. Invitingly simple balls, that he would have taken a mild pleasure in lifting into the Lords’ pavilion, he felt bound to treat with every respect, as a momentary indiscretion was likely to have the direst consequences. But presently the flesh was no longer to be denied. Having patiently withstood the insidious charms of six or seven, his self-repression suddenly gave way, and, exactly as the bowler anticipated, smash went the ball through the library windows. It was vain that Elphinstone, celebrated out-field as he was, attempted to get at it. A painfully significant crashing of glass testified to the unfailing judgment of W. G. A moment later, to the consternation of every witness of the incident, out came the reverend occupant of the library, spectacted and bareheaded, The Times newspaper fluttering in his hand, and a great indignation hovering about him generally.

“I positively won’t have it!” he cried in his deepest tones. “It’s shameful! Do you know what that window’s worth? And are you aware that you’ve damaged the new Encyclopædia Britannica?”

[173]“Well, father,” said W. G. penitently, “we are all of us ever so dreadfully sorry,” and then made haste to append, “but you know you bought the Cycling—what-do-you-call-it—quite against my advice, didn’t you, father? Don’t believe in these great bargains. You men don’t either, do you?”

“Oh no, we don’t,” chimed everybody, with wonderful conviction and unanimity.

“I knew you didn’t,” said Grace, with great enthusiasm. “I was certain that you didn’t.”

Our extreme distrust of the Encyclopædia Britannica, considered as an investment, grew quite noticeable.

Incredible as it may seem, however, Miss Grace’s parent did not allow these earnestly-expressed opinions to bias his own in the matter of window breaking. Indeed, they were as fervently uttered as ours, and, if anything, more pointed. Nor did he abate in his behaviour, nor did his Times cease its fluttering till he suddenly observed the situation of the wicket, and the mighty cricketer beside it. Thereupon the change in his demeanour was as instant as it was welcome.

“What!” he cried, “was it hit from there? Extraordinary, most extraordinary! Archie, let me feel that bat. And, Biffin, will you please fetch the tape. This must be measured. Considerably more than a hundred yards, I’ll wager.”

[174]Next moment he was brandishing Archie’s bat, in a manner that plainly said that this was not the first bat handle that had exercised his grip.

“A Warsop, is it?” said the veteran. “I remember ’em. Once remember putting old Mat Kempson out of Prince’s with one of Ben’s. Old Matthew was annoyed. Beautifully balanced this is. Must be every ounce of two-seven, yet it picks up like two-two.”

“It’s two-seven and a half, sir,” said Archie, with a particularly pleased expression.

“It’s a pretty bit o’ wood,” said the old gentleman, with caresses in his tone. “A pretty bit o’ wood. I think I’d like to try it. Laura, just send me one along. Nice and slow, please; my eyesight’s not what it used to be.”

This request made his daughter a very proud and happy person. Having instructed Toddles, in imperious language, to recover the ball at once from the library débris, and he having instantly obeyed, she said:

“All right, father; here you are. Mind the ‘work.’ There’s an awful lot o’ stuff on,” and bowled him one of her very best. This the old gentleman kept out of his wicket stiffly but skilfully.

“It strikes me that father can give us all a[175] point or two yet,” said Miss Grace, evidently charmed with the way in which he had defended his wicket.

“He’d still be playing for Middlesex if it were not for his eyesight,” said the best bowler in England.

“It’s my sciatica, Charlie; it’s my sciatica!” sighed the old gentleman. “When I was your age, my boy, it was different.”

The return of Biffin with the tape measure prolonged this interruption to the game. For it was not until old Mr. Trentham had arrived by mensuration at the exact distance of Archie’s drive, that he retired in high good humour to his shattered library. Even then before the game could be resumed there was a legal argument involved. Gloucestershire argued under “Rectory rules” that, in the event of any batsman breaking a window, or hitting a ball over the hedge, or sending it on to the garden twice in one innings, the said batsman should be out. They acted on the expert advice of W. G., who, as the irreverent Toddles said, knew every move on the board, and one or two that were under it. Middlesex disclaimed all knowledge of the clause in question, and T. S. M. even had the audacity to suggest that it was an invention of W. G.’s to suit the present occasion. W. G., of course, very indignantly[176] denied this, and, fortunately for her side, was able by a simple expedient to prove beyond controversy that the attitude of Middlesex was quite inadmissible, and entirely opposed to the best interests of the game. For, running into the house, she triumphantly returned with a dog’s-eared and time-stained exercise book, wherein, under rule seven, duly set forth in a large, round, juvenile hand, it was found that Archie was most certainly out.

“Won’t it look a bit queer, though?” said T. S. M. “A. H. Trentham, broke window, bowled W. G. Grace, three?”

“He shouldn’t be so reckless,” said W. G. severely. “Besides, it won’t look queerer than A. H. Trentham sent the ball on the garden twice. The idea of Rectory rules is to sit on brute force a bit you know, and to prop—to propa—just wait while I look in the book. Yes, here it is, ‘and to encourage the propagation and cultivation of pure science.’”

“Which rendered into modern English means,” said Carteret, who, in his spare time, was a barrister, “that the aim of the Rectory rules is to get the other side out as soon as ever you can, and then keep in yourself until you’ve had enough. That’s about it, Grace, isn’t it?”

“No, James,” said that authority; “it’s just[177] where you’re wrong. ’Cause some people never have had enough. I’ve not for one.”

“She’s as bad as Ranjy for battin’,” said the Harrow captain. “Set’s shillin’s on her sticks, and tempts Biffin to sweat away at ’em till he’s set up heart disease. Dirt mean, I call it. Ought to be half-crowns for a man his years.”

“You’re not likely to give anything heart disease in knocking tips off your sticks, are you, Tommy?” said his sister persuasively.

Harrow liked not this at all. Therefore, when a serious flaw in Gloucestershire’s line of argument occurred to T. S. M., his face lit up with a sudden satisfaction.

“Perhaps Doctor William Gilbert Grace’ll tell us,” said he, dwelling lovingly on every word, “If accordin’ to the blitherin’ rules a fellow’s out every time he breaks a window, why she don’t go out herself every time she breaks the cucumber frame.”

The Harrow captain ended amidst the approving shouts of Middlesex.

“That’s amongst your timber, Willy,” said the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, executing a pas seul in the middle of the pitch.

“Oh, is it?” said the dauntless W. G. “You just hold on a bit. A window is a window, and a cucumber frame’s a cucumber frame.”

[178]“A Daniel come to judgment,” said Archie, otherwise A. E. Stoddart. “Are there no windows in a cucumber frame then?”

“Why o’ course there’s not, Archie—I mean, Stoddy,” said W. G., in a tone that might have been mistaken for intimidation.

“’May be wrong, you know,” said Archie; “but in my opinion panes of glass constitute windows, if they’re fixed in a cucumber frame, just as much as though they were in a church.”

“Stoddy, you’re talking through your hat,” said W. G. “A window’s a thing to see out of, isn’t it?”

“S’pose it is,” said the Middlesex captain.

“Well, Stoddy,” said the triumphant W. G., “just you tell us how cucumber frames can have windows if cucumbers can’t see.”

Great uproar from Gloucester, during which the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone was seen to throw himself full length on the lawn, and roll about in sheer gaieté de cœur. Even the dignified features of the Middlesex captain were disturbed by a broad smile.

“Doctor,” he said, “they’ll have to make you a baronet yet. Oh, you amusing person!”

“She may be a kind of conscientious objector, don’t you know?” cried Carteret, the legal luminary, aiming ineffectual kicks at the rolling[179] curate. “Rather think you’d better give the doctor a certificate of exemption, Stoddy, if Grace’ll swear solemnly on oath that she conscientiously believes that cucumbers really cannot see by any chance or possibility.”

The display of feeling that greeted this solution of the problem was remarkable. The fat barrister was hailed as a legal genius.

“Well,” said Archie, screwing his features into a defiant solemnity, “if the Old Man’ll swear by her beard that she conscientiously believes that cucumbers really can’t see, we’ll insert a special clause into the rules to provide for the cucumber frame.”

“But I can’t, you know, Archie,” said Miss Grace, “’cause I’ve got no beard. But I do believe that cucumbers can’t see all the same though.”

“This is serious,” said the unrelenting Archie. “The Old Man without his beard is worse than Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.”

“You’ll have to swear on something, Willy, that’s a cert.,” said Charlie, “else we shan’t believe you.”

“Somebody fetch a Bible,” said Carteret. “Now then, Toddles, you idle little beast, why don’t you go and fetch one of your collection.”

“Let her kiss my hat,” said the little curate,[180] suddenly sitting upright on the grass, with a look of utter holiness that would have made his vicar glad. “As I’m a parson, it’ll be quite the truest administration of an oath that’s possible. Every parson carries the whole contents of the Scriptures in the lining, all hallowed by his intellect as well. You know it, brethren, don’t you? Besides, it’ll save me the fag of going to the house. Yes, by all means, let her kiss my hat.”

At this suggestion, the solemnity that seized us all was really marvellous. We had gravity enough to equip a class for confirmation.

“Jimmy, here’s my hat!” said Toddles. “Isn’t it a blessing that you’re a commissioner for oaths—horrid awful ones they are, you fat blasphemer!”—this in an eloquent aside.

“Here, Grace, is his hat,” said Carteret.

Miss Grace took the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone’s not very particularly ecclesiastical Harlequin cricket cap, and looked at it with some dubiety.

“But this is not his hat, James,” said she. “This is his Harlequin.”

“All the same,” said Carteret judicially. “Embodies much of his best thought. Look sharp and swear, Grace! It’s a great strain on us all, I can assure you, Doctor, even though you mightn’t think it. These moments of high emotion always are.”

[181]Nobody laughed I am prepared to affirm. But before Miss Grace had the oath administered to her, she looked at the witnesses with a keenness that inconvenienced several of them rather considerably. She then proceeded to thoughtfully scratch her chin.

“James,” said she, in a perplexed tone, “don’t quite know, you know; not quite sure, you know, but—but I think you’re having me.”

“Rather think you’re having us,” said Archie. “Do be quick, Grace! As James says, you don’t know how difficult it is for us. Look at poor Toddles worrying the grass.”

“What an emotional little man it is!” said Captain George with rare sympathy. “And what a ghastly thing it must be to have such a high-strung nature.”

“I think you men are laughing at me,” said Miss Grace sternly.

“She cannot understand us,” said George. “How sad it is to be misunderstood!”

The poor soldier ended by diving suddenly and ignominiously for his handkerchief.

“You don’t take me in,” said Grace.

“She won’t kiss Toddles’ cap,” said T. S. M., with the brutality of his time of life, “because she thinks if she holds out long enough she’ll be able to kiss Toddles himself.”

[182]“Tommy!” said his sister, “if you were not so young, I should think you were rude.”

A second later she added most uncompromisingly, “And it’s all right. I’m not going to be had. I’m not going to kiss Toddles’s cap, if it is a Harlequin, and if he did make a hundred against Cambridge in it. And I’m not going to take the oath, and I’m not going to play the giddy ox at all. Archie, you’re out, under rule seven, and out you’ve got to go. What’s your opinion, Biffin? Is Mr. Archie out, or is he not?”

“Hout, miss,” said Biffin. “Hout, most certingly.”

“There you are!” said the Gloucestershire captain. “Next man get his pads on. And if he’s not in in two minutes, his wicket’ll be claimed, under rule forty-five.”

“Well, as the umpire is against me,” said Archie, “I suppose I shall have to go. All the same, I think the M.C.C. ought to know about it. These rules seem a bit unusual.”

“It’s ’cause you’re like the cucumbers, you know, Archie,” said W. G. “It’s ’cause you can’t see.”

It is scarcely necessary to give a detailed narration of my first county match. In a little over an hour the four Middlesex representatives were disposed of for thirty-three. This was considered[183] a small score for the ground; but as both sides fielded, and very admirably too, and hitting carried penalties with it, the Middlesex total calls for no comment. Besides, the Gloucestershire captain was a remarkably alert tactician, who knew the game of cricket perfectly well, and the Rectory rules even better. Her placing of the field betrayed an intimate acquaintance with the characteristics of each batsman; and her slow bowling was perfect in length, and as full of deception as it possibly could be. It might be true that Miss Grace had no beard; but it did not prevent her representing W. G. in most essentials. Indeed so much so, that when the youthful Harrow captain came in second wicket, she was heard to remark, “Oh, he’s a young ’un, is he! I think I can do for him.” And in addition to her other gifts, she possessed that rare but invaluable quality in a captain, of practically dictating the decisions of the umpire. There is no doubt that the Gloucestershire captain was invariably conscientious in her appeals, and the umpire equally so in his decisions. But their common faith in one another was beautiful. If Miss Grace did make an appeal, the excellent Biffin felt bound to endorse it. In his eyes Miss Grace’s judgment had an absolute and sovereign rectitude. Old pro. and county man as he was,[184] Biffin had never an opinion of his own on any point on which Miss Grace happened to already entertain one. And this phenomenon in itself, I think, supplies a sufficient reason why the fair sex has yet to be seen in serious cricket. It simply would not do.

The fielding was excellent. Miss Grace’s eye was on it, and all of us, whether we felt inclined that way or not, performed prodigies of valour. And if the handsomest girl in the county brings off a bewilderingly brilliant “caught and bowled” before one’s eyes, stops the hottest cracks one hand, and fields and returns smashing hits all in one action, any man, with the least pretensions to be a player, is certain to be a bit above himself. Therefore do not be surprised that my fielding in all positions was very good indeed, and won encomiums from men who were accustomed to the best.

“Dimsdale,” said the little curate in a low but excruciatingly friendly tone, “you stick to that pick-up and return, and you’ve got the least little bit of a hundredth part of a look in. Keep as clean and keen as that, and it’s just on the cards that you may be adopted as a candidate.”

“Candidate?” said I.

“There was a man named Comfort came over here to lunch,” said the little curate.

This sinister reference afflicted me with an[185] overpowering disinclination to pursue the subject farther.

Before Gloucestershire began their innings there was an interval for tea. There is no doubt that this question of afternoon tea has become quite a vexed one with the counties, and as Elphinstone—or was it Carteret?—observed, there are counties in existence who resolutely refuse to countenance the innovation. But Gloucestershire was never one of these. Indeed, I’ve heard it said that when Gloucestershire are fielding, though the reason is inexplicable of course, there is more time consumed over the cup that cheers than on any other occasion. Therefore in this instance it was quite an expected thing that there should be a pretty considerable interval for tea, and that Gloucester’s captain should lead the way to a fair white table, seductively spread in the shade of the beeches and the chestnuts in the coolest corner of the garden. The Rectory grounds were of no remarkable extent, but harboured a charming wilderness with two lawns therein beautifully turfed and mown and rolled for cricket only, to break the monotony of shrubs, trees, and flowers, growing at their own sweet will. If this was the favoured spot in which this famous family had been reared, and this the air they breathed, small wonder that they played cricket as naturally as Keats wrote poetry.[186] They couldn’t help it. My enthusiasm demanded an outlet, and I told Miss Grace that hers was the most delightful place I’d ever seen.

“Yes, isn’t it just stunning!” she cried, while her glowing look announced that her chiefest pleasure was to sing its praises. “Every morning when I look out of my window and hear the birds kicking up a jolly noise in the ivy, and see the dew scooting off the wicket, it seems to come to me all at once, as if I’d never thought of it before, that I live at just the primest place that ever was.”

“Isn’t it pretty old?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” said she. “Been in our family——”

“Since Noah,” T. S. M. rudely interposed.

“Now then,” said Toddles, “don’t Harrow your sister’s feelings.”

“Been in our family,” Miss Grace continued, ignoring these cursory remarks with fine dignity, “since—since—oh well a long time before cricket was invented. Been some awful swells here, too, at one time and another. Old William Lillywhite once came here to tea. Then one or two other awful pots have lived here—Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Joseph Addison, oh! and the girl who invented round arm bowling.”

“And the girl who invented round arm bowlin’!” said the Harrow captain. “Now tell us somethin’ else. The girl who invented round arm bowlin’![187] Grace, when you get your jaw unshipped it’s a pleasure to sit and listen.”

“Yes it was a girl,” said Miss Grace determinedly. “The Guv’nor’s got a picture of her in his portfolio. Her name was Willes. What a good sort she must have been! I just love that girl. I wish she was living now, ’cause then I could jolly well go and hug her for inventing it.”

“Miss Willes knew a thing or two, however,” said the Harrow captain, “and took care to die in time.”

This was thought to be so undeserved, that the youthful Tom was instantly collared low by the little curate, with all the science, natural and applied, of a three-quarter who had been capped for England twice, and flung into a prickly bush of gooseberries.

“In my opinion,” the little parson hastened to remark, in an attempt to divert the public mind from this painful incident, “your place has only one fault, Grace. It’s just a bit too small.”

“Oh, no,” said Grace; “I wouldn’t have it different for worlds. I wouldn’t even have a fly knocked off it. What there is is perfect. Always reminds me of you, you know, Toddles—it’s little and good.”

“My dear Grace,” said the little curate, bowing[188] over his cap; “my dear Grace, even I, the meanest of your servants! But if you believe that your harrowing youngest brother would benefit in manners by a heavy fall upon his head, pray let me hear you say so.”

It was in this amiably Christian spirit that the representatives of Gloucestershire and Middlesex came to the tea-table. W. G., of course, presided and dispensed the tea to the manner born; and the supplies of strawberries and cream were so prodigious, indeed almost inexhaustible, that we were allowed to help ourselves. It may not be generally known that strawberries and cream are as essential to the cricket epicure as a hard wicket and a cloudless heaven. There is something in their mere flavour that smacks of glorious summer!

We had just begun our depredations, when the Rector appeared, in a battered wideawake, with a long hoe in one hand, a cricket ball in the other, and a particularly stern countenance behind his perspiration.

“Why, that’s the ball we lost last week!” cried Miss Grace. “Oh, thank you, father; it is very good of you to bring it to us. Quite new too. Only been played with twice.”

“I am very gratified to find that you do recognise it, Laura,” said the Rector. “When I do happen to find them amongst the ruins, they are mostly made[189] out to come there in the ordinary course of nature, like the frost and rain; as no one has the least idea, as a rule, how they could possibly have arrived by any other agency. Do you know that you have smashed my best auratum lily in the most wanton and outrageous manner?”

“Indeed I don’t, father,” said Miss Grace, with a look of trouble. “You don’t think it could have been the hedgehog, do you, father?”

“No, I don’t think it could have been the hedgehog, nor the peacock.”

“It might have been the mongoose, don’t you think?” Miss Grace said; “they’re such awfully queer and ugly things.”

“No, I don’t think it was the mongoose,” said her parent, “queer and ugly as they are. I think it was the cricket, and I propose to stop the cricket’s little game. It’s shameful!”

“What, stop the cricket, sir!” His daughter’s tone was tragical.

“Yes, stop the cricket. I’ll have no more of it. It’s simply massacred my tobacco plants. Rows upon rows I’ve tried to count and can’t, that have got their tops off and are pounded into snuff.”

“I’m jolly sorry, father,” said Miss Grace. “But s’pose you have a cup of tea. You look so hot and fagged. A cup of tea, with lots of cream in, and a few of the best strawberries that you ever grew.[190] Do you see that we’re enjoying ’em a fortnight later than anybody else?”

“I also see,” said the Rector—not to be diverted by the tactful feminine—“that my tigridias are broken into little pieces. The more I think of what you’ve done, the more annoyed I feel!”

“I am afraid that it’s my hard hitting that’s done the mischief, sir,” said the great batsman, who was going out with Stoddart, humbly.

“Oh, no, Archie,” said his sister, “nothing of the sort. Now I come to think of it, I remember doing it myself. Look here, father, s’pose you stop my ‘tin’ till the damage has been paid for.”

“That is a punishment that defeats itself,” the Rector said. “Last time I took that course, these big brothers of yours, who are old enough to know better, aided and abetted you to the extent of subscribing twice the amount of pocket-money that you were losing. Why, you were able to buy a new bat out of the profits of your crimes.”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Grace quickly, “it was good old George who gave me that. I can’t help old George being such a good sort, can I?”

“For valour, sir,” said the soldier, “always admire mettle, even in criminals of the deepest dye.”

“You are all as bad as one another,” said the old gentleman, sitting down to tea.

[191]“Father,” said the hostess, “you are sitting next to Mr. Dimsdale, who’ll soon be playing for his county. He’s got the loveliest crack to cover that you ever saw.”

“Very glad to see you, sir,” said the old gentleman, “and I hope you’ll excuse my display of heat. It takes a gardener to appreciate my feelings. One cricket ball in one minute will find more repairs for Nature than she can get through in a year.”

“I was thinking to myself, father, when you interrupted me,” said Miss Grace, “that cricket nowadays is not what it was in your time. Where are the great men of your day? There’s no Haywards and Carpenters now; and there’s no Tarrants and Willshers. Where is the man that can bowl like old John Jackson, where is the chap that can hit to leg like old George Parr?”

It is a very painful thing for a determined admirer of Miss Grace’s sex to set down in black and white, but I’m sure that, with one exception, every man around that festive tea-table instinctively distrusted Miss Grace’s extremely solemn countenance. The one exception, incredible as it may seem, was Miss Grace’s honourable and reverend papa.

“By Jove!” cried the best bowler in England, playing his sister’s wicked, unscrupulous game,[192] “Grace is right. There’s no stars like there used to be in the Guv’nor’s time.”

“Yes, Charlie,” said Miss Grace, “I’m very sorry to say it, but cricket’s going down. Tom Richardson, Johnny Briggs, Arthur Mold, and Charlie Trentham are not fit to tie the boots of George Freeman, Jimmy Shaw, David Buchanan, and ‘The Reverent.’ And the batting too. The Old Man was in his prime in the seventies, Shrewsbury’s getting on, and where are you to find a man with the style of Dicky Daft? and even Toddles can’t cut like old Eph. Lockwood, and Archie can’t lift ’em like Charlie Thornton. Cricket was cricket then. It wasn’t so much like billiards. Batsmen had to face their luck on all sorts o’ pitches, whilst now they get their wickets laid and prepared just like a jolly old foundation stone.”

It may be that the end justified the means. For certain it is that Miss Grace’s parent forgot all about his mutilated garden. The old gentleman sat and beamed. He began to sip his tea and talk of other times.

“Ha!” he sighed, “I envy you young dogs. I should like to have a try at those Australians!”

“Father’s used to curl in the air, you know,” said his daughter to me proudly. “They’re very scarce. There’s no man now that can make ’em do[193] it quite like the Guv’nor—curl one way and break another. ’Fairly gave the batsman fits. If Charlie could only make ’em do it, he’d be the biggest terror that ever was. Don’t you think so, Father?”

“I wouldn’t like to say that,” said the modest old gentleman. Nevertheless there was a tender approval in the eye with which he regarded the very fine fast bowler, who was so busy with his strawberries and cream.

“That’s right, sir,” said that young man quite anxiously; “for you really must not encourage Grace in this curl in the air sort o’ rot, you know. Whenever she gets me to herself, she whips a ball out of her pocket and says, ‘Now then, Charlie, let’s have you at it,’ measures twenty-two yards, and keeps me trying to find out those patent swerves of yours for about two hours at a stretch.”

“Better be doing that than smoking horrible tobacco, or practising the push stroke, or reading for the law in a pink paper that’s got the starting prices in it,” said his sister sternly.

“But I say that the Guv’nor’s leg curl can’t be learnt,” said Charlie. “I say it has to come by nature.”

“Well,” said his sister, “I don’t care, Charlie, how you have it come, whether by nature, Pickford’s, or the Parcel Post. But you’ve got to get it, Charlie. Just think of the value of it to England[194] and Middlesex. Why, they’d be playing you to leg and have their middles telescoped like fun wouldn’t they, Father?”

“I think that’s how I used to effect ’em occasionally,” said the old gentleman, with a twinkle. “It used to be said that the All England Eleven once called a meeting to discuss how these curly twisters should be played. Some of ’em would lie awake at nights trying to find out the scientific way. But I don’t think they ever did. Once I remember bowling Tom Hayward second ball both innings in one match, and it made poor Tom so sick that they had to put leeches on his head.”

“Oh, Mr. Dimsdale,” sighed Miss Grace, “I should like you to have seen old father in his day. That’s why he’s a D.D., you know. Cambridge gave it him for his bowling.”

“Really!” I said. “Is that a fact?”

“Well,” said the Rector, and I never saw a man look more mischievous, “I don’t quite think it was for my learning.”

“Toddles,” said Archie, “Oxford’ll elect you to a fellowship if you did get a Fourth in Mods.”

“Laura,” said the Rector, “let me assure you again that I don’t think this curl in the air can be acquired. Therefore, I should recommend you to spend your spare time in more profitable employments. For instance, playing with a perfectly[195] straight bat, or weeding the garden, or trying to read Horace without a crib.”

This was Charlie’s opportunity. For a moment that boisterous person seemed mightily inconvenienced by the Homeric laughter that shook his being.

“What price Grace,” he cried, “spending her spare time in reading Horace? Why, she only knows of one chap called Horace in the reading line, which his other name is Hutchinson.”

“Oh, don’t I though?” said Grace. “I know the Horace father means. A fat old bounder who was always thirsty; awful fond of wine, he was, awful fond. Don’t think he was ever in condition. As for his jaw, it was something frightful. Why, I’ve got a very cultivated literary taste, haven’t I, Father?”

“Very,” said her parent gently.

“Oh, yes, I can quite believe that the Guv’nor strokes your fur a bit,” said Archie, whose insight into the human heart was pitiless, “when he has you in on Saturday evenings and wants to persuade you to fish him a few quotations out of Bohn. We know where all the embroidery comes from, don’t we, Toddles?”

“It’s not Bohn, anyhow,” said Miss Grace, “’cause the binding’s better. Hullo, what’s up with Toddles! Why, he’s choking!”

[196]It required the undivided energies of two strong men to beat the little curate on the back ere he was restored to a sense of his responsibilities.

“I think,” said the old gentleman, with sly enjoyment, “that these revelations are hardly suited to the young miss. Feminine ideals, you know.”

At this Miss Grace looked keenly about her on every side. “It’s all serene, Father,” said she. “There’s none o’ the maids about. Don’t think they can possibly hear us.”

“Laura,” said the old gentleman, hiding the most significant part of his face in a tea-cup, “I want you to confine yourself in your spare time to learning to play with a perfectly straight bat. The way in which you pull everything blindly to leg is a reproach, a disgrace to the family. You boys ought to be really ashamed of it, and it grieves me to think that Laura’s self-respect allows her to do it. I’m wondering if we had Arthur Shrewsbury down for a bit whether he’d be able to do anything for her.”

“It’s her sex asserting itself,” said Archie. (It should be said at once that Archie has such an amount of psychology and kindred things in his mind that he has written a novel for the Keynotes Series.) “The eternal feminine is not to be repressed. There’s two things about Grace’s cricket that betrays the woman. One, as the Guv’nor has[197] remarked, is her deplorable habit of playing everything with a cross bat; the other is a well-defined tendency to dispute the umpire’s decisions. Woman-like, she declines to recognise a mere man’s authority. If it were not for the fear that she’d have been defying Bob Thoms or some other potentate, and refusing to go out when he gave her ‘petticoat before,’ we might have played her for Middlesex, for her bowling and fielding all through the season.”

“It’s all jolly fine you men ragging me about my cross bat,” said poor Miss Grace, whose face had the tawny red of a tea-rose. “But if I was Ranjy, or Clem Hill, or Archie Trentham, or one of those big pots, people ’ud say it was a marvellous hook stroke, and the fruit of my wonderful original method.”

“Yes,” said her enemy of Harrow, “if you were Ranjy, or Clem Hill, or Archie Trentham, or one of those big pots, your picture’d be in the Jubilee Cricket Book, with you in the act of droppin’ ’em into the cucumber frame. But as you don’t happen to be Ranjy, or Clem Hill, or Archie Trentham, or one of those big pots, but Miss Laura Mary, the cheekiest girl that ever put her hair in pins, your cross bat is beastly disgusting, and cruel rough on your people. And if your father don’t send for Shrewsbury to lick you into shape, we will, because[198] you’ve got to be broke in, that’s certin. Whenever I think about your battin’, Laura,—it’s an insult to the Old Man to call you Grace,—it makes me downright sick.”

“Gentlemen,” said the little parson, rising at this point in the peroration and speaking in his most clergymanly intonation, “must we not do our painful duty?”

Whereon five men stood up as one, suddenly took young Tom from behind, and despite his struggles, bore him bodily to the biggest and prickliest gooseberry bush in the vicinity. They deposited him on the top of it, with what appeared unnecessary violence, and when he wriggled himself off, he brought away a rather uncomfortable quantity of needles in his epidermis.

WHEN peace had been restored, Captain George remarked, “Apropos of the Guv’nor’s curl in the air, it’s very singular and a bit annoying too that Grace is the only one of us who has developed it. There’s no doubt that she’s got it. Don’t you think so, sir?”

“Undoubtedly,” said the old gentleman. “And I think it is because she delivers the ball with a stiff arm, just as I used to do. It’s the clearest case of heredity that I ever saw.”

“If Grace was not a girl,” said Archie, “she’d be the best bowler in England to-day. That curl from leg of hers, when it occasionally takes it into its head to come back from the off after it’s pitched requires more watching than anything I know.”

“Grace, will you qualify for Kent?” said Carteret.

Miss Grace, although somewhat embarrassed by the praises of these great men, which caused her to[200] blush most adorably, was supremely happy. It was honey to her to be considered on her merits as a cricketer.

“I wish this jolly leg curl was Charlie’s instead of mine,” said its flattered owner in the most unselfish manner. “What use is it to me? If Charlie’d got it now, Stoddy’d be obliged to take him with him in the autumn. Or even if that young cub of a Tommy had got it, it might get him in the county.”

“If the young cub in question can’t get in the county without the help of a girl,” said the Harrow captain, sore but dignified, “he’d prefer to stop outside, thank you.”

“Boy,” said the little parson, “you must learn to respect your elders—sisters especially.”

“But she’s my twin,” said T. S. M.

“She’s older than you, though, ever so much older,” said the oracular Archie. “Girls don’t begin to grow young until they become women. Only wait a bit; there’ll come a time when you’ll find yourself years older than Grace is.”

“But she’s so beas’ly patronisin’,” said poor T. S. M. “She might be a howlin’ authority on the game, a reg’ler A. G. Steel, or a chap like that, instead of a beas’ly girl with the cheek of a female journalist. I’ll admit she’s got a bit o’ book knowledge,—Badminton, and all that—and can talk like a phonograph, but she’s not going to play the apostle[201] with me, not if I know it. Her airs are alarmin’. Don’t know why you men let her rag you, and fag you, and cheek you, and order you about the show accordin’ to her imperial pleasure. I’m goin’ to kick. To me that sort o’ thing ain’t at all amusin’. Why at Harrow——”

“Yes, at Harrow,” said the little parson eagerly.

“Yes, at Harrow,” said Archie, with a burning eye.

“Yes, at Harrow,” said every individual person at the table in the proper order in which he was seated, with strained intensity.

“I can see you’re all under her thumb,” said the unhappy T. S. M., reddening to the roots of his hair. “She just ruffles it over everybody, from the Guv’nor to the gardener’s boy. And her ways are simply howlin’. I brought Billy Jowett, who’s in the same game as me at Har—, yes, in the same game as me, down here for a week end. And this nice brought-up sister o’ mine says to him after he’d been here about a day, ‘I say, Mister Jowett, isn’t it exhaustin’ to have such brilliant gifts? Your mama is so proud of you, I’m sure, and how brave of her to let you come so far from home without your governess!’ Well, that riled Billy so cruel that he just cut back by the next train, and he says that if I ever ask him to come down again he shall take it as an insult.”

[202]“That’s luck,” said the unabashed Miss Grace. “The coxey little boy; and he was such an awfully gifted being! Talked of George Eliot as though he knew him well. Then he got discussing ‘The Historical Continuity of the Church of England’ with the Guv’nor, and then ‘The Inwardness of the Harmsworth Magazine,’ and housetop talk o’ that sort. Then he got arguing with the Guv’nor—yes, arguing, Archie, and once I’m certain that he contradicted the Guv’nor flat. It just made my blood boil; and when he said, Archie, ‘that he had been told that you batted rather well,’ I thought it somewhere about time that he had a hint.”

“He’s the smartest classic in the school, anyhow,” said T. S. M. hotly. “Greek and Latin prizeman, and all that, and he’s going up to Trinity next term, and he’s certain to get a fellowship, besides a double blue.”

“He’s big enough bore to get a deanery,” was Miss Grace’s swift answer.

I grieve to say that the whole table, her reverend papa included, seemed really charmed with this audacious speech.

“Well,” said Harrow’s captain, feeling that the day was going against him, and therefore losing his head a little, and mixing his metaphors horribly, “you can curl back into your shell. Your airs won’t wash with me. And don’t put side on with[203] a pitchfork either, for when all’s said, you are barely an hour older than I am.”

“Yes, dear Tommy,” said his sister; “but then, you see, I’ve not been to Harrow.”

The Fates, however, were now kind enough to play into the hands of T. S. M. It is almost certain else that his mutilated corpse had been carried from this fatal field. A maid-servant issued from the house with a pink slip in her hand. She delivered it into the care of the Harrow captain.

“The boy’s waiting, sir,” said she.

Tom tore off the wrapper. Thereon he was seen to grow noticeably pale, while he allowed the telegram to flutter from his fingers.

“I say!” he gasped.

Miss Grace pounced on the pink paper like a hawk, and read out its contents in a voice thrilling with excitement: “You are selected for Kent match, Monday, Tonbridge. Reply paid, Webbe. Hooray! Hooray! Isn’t A. J. just a darling!”

The exuberant young person waved the telegram about in such a frantic manner that she overturned the teapot into the lap of Carteret.

“Terribly sorry, James,” she said breathlessly; “terribly sorry. But lend me a pencil, somebody, and, Jane, just see that that boy don’t go.”

A pencil being promptly forthcoming, Miss Grace[204] wrote in a hasty but firm hand on the slip attached: “Shall be very glad to play, Tonbridge, Monday. T. Trentham.”

“There you are, Jane,” said she; “give that to the boy,” and fishing half-a-crown from her purse, added, “and this is for him, too.”

“Laura, what unwarrantable extravagance,” said the Rector, looking so happy that he could scarcely sit still.

“It ’ud be five shillings,” said Miss Grace, “only I want some new gloves for Tonbridge on Monday. But isn’t it glorious! Isn’t it tremendous of A. J.! Tommy, I’m so delighted! And didn’t I say from the first that they wouldn’t pass you over? And you will take me to Tonbridge, won’t you, Father?”

“I think you are more likely to take me,” said that indulgent man.

The whole-hearted joy of them all was infectious. I might have a dim idea that my own county had yet to behave in a similar way towards one whom I held to be peculiarly worthy, but, none the less, I bore my part in the back thumpings as gallantly as any. The recipient of these congratulations, talkative to the point of calamity the moment before, was now in such a state of miserable happiness that he could not find a word to say. With his eyes fixed modestly on his plate he was white one minute, and red the next. His sister, however[205] determined a foe she might be, was most unmistakably delighted. After inserting a strawberry into Elphinstone’s shirt-collar, not necessarily as a cause of offence, but rather as a guarantee of her excessive happiness, she ended by falling on her father bodily, and publicly hugging him.

“Pater,” she said, “you don’t mind, do you? It is so horribly jolly nice to feel that Tommy’s playing on Monday, isn’t it?”

About five minutes later the Harrow captain became the victim of an idea.

“’Ought to reply now, I suppose,” he said nervously. “’Wonder if the boy’s gone. Would you say you’d play? What do you say, sir? What do you say, Grace? How would you word it? Don’t quite know what to do. Somehow feel I’m not altogether fit.”

“It’s all right, Tommy; I have replied,” said his sister. “You’re playing on Monday.”

“It’s beas’ly good of you, old girl,” said her youngest brother.

“What price Harrow’s principles now?” cried Carteret. “Here is the man who was not going to let his sister play the apostle with him. Wasn’t he going to let her see!”

“Shut up, James,” said Miss Grace, “else you’ll get some more tea on your togs. Soon as a fellow plays for the county he gets sense knocked[206] into him, and grows into a man quite suddenly. Now, Tommy, mind no more smoking this week; early to bed, you know, not a minute after ten; nice long morning walks, and, perhaps, a Turkish bath on Saturday. We must have you like—like a jumping cracker for Monday.”

“Mayn’t I smoke cigarettes?” said the meek Tommy.

“No, not one,” said his tyrannical sister. “And I shall put you on oysters and beef-tea. Oh, and cod-liver oil.”

“Cod-liver oil?” said the prospective county man. He made a grimace.

“Certainly,” said Miss Grace. “Archie and Charlie take a tablespoonful a day, don’t you? I simply insist on it, don’t I?”

“Lord, yes!” groaned those great men.

“S’pose I’ve got to have it, then,” said the Harrow captain humbly.

From this it should be seen that county cricket is not quite all beer and skittles. It has its drawbacks.

The enthusiasm had scarcely had time to die when a solitary figure, in a grey flannel suit, came through the laurel bushes and over the lawn to the tumultuous tea-table. It was the Optimist.

“Delighted to see you, my boy,” said the Rector. “Sit down, and get at those strawberries.”

[207]“One lump or two, Cheery?” said the brisk Grace. “And Tommy’s playing against Kent on Monday. Isn’t it scrumptious! Toddles, send the cream along, will you when you’ve taken your blazer out of it? But isn’t it prime about Tommy?”

“Your fist, old man!” demanded the Optimist. He wrung T. S. M.’s hand in such a way that it was lucky it was not his bowling arm.

The Optimist, best of good fellows as he was, might have sought for years to find the highway into Miss Grace’s heart, and yet not have so nearly found it as he did just then. For his behaviour clearly said, that if he was not in his own person a great cricketer, none the less he had a true feeling for the game.

As the champion county had made a moderate score, and Gloucestershire felt that they therefore could afford to be generous, Brightside was allowed to bat for Middlesex. Unfortunately, his efforts in the batting line were of very little service to his side. When the poor chap took his guard, and then looked up and saw Miss Grace preparing to deliver, he couldn’t have been in a greater funk had she been Spofforth himself. One ball transacted his business. It had the paternal curl, and also “did a bit” as well.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said the tender-hearted[208] bowler, as the poor Optimist’s wicket shed a silent bail; “but it was a good ’un, wasn’t it? The Old Man’s analysis is three wickets for fourteen. Not so dusty, is it, for a veteran?”

“Are you counting that broken window a wicket?” asked the victim of Law Seven, Rectory Rules.

“What do you think?” said W. G. “If I chuck you a ’tice, and it leads you to take liberties, what do you think, Archie?”

“Why, I think your cheek’s increasing,” said the emphatic Archie.

Grace went in first for Gloucestershire, of course.

“One leg, Biffin, if you please,” said she, bending her brown face over her bat handle. “Toddles, will you have the goodness to come from behind the bowler’s arm? Oh, and Biffin, you must not forget that according to Rule Nine anything above medium is a no-ball. Fast bowling’s dangerous here, you know, tempts one to hit so hard. Do you hear that, Charlie?—nothing above medium.”

The best bowler in England was cruel enough to drop in one of his celebrated “yorkers” to his sister first ball. Even with the most accomplished defensive batswomen a yorker is always liable to have a fatal termination. It had in this instance. Crash went Miss Grace’s middle.

[209]“No-ball!” yelled the umpire, just in the nick of time.

“Got that no-ball down to Gloucester, Father?” cried the imperturbable Grace to her parent who sat scoring under a willow tree, a safe distance away. “Oh, and Biffin, I think I’d better have two leg, I was bit inside that one, wasn’t I?” The way in which she lifted a bail and scraped the crease was W.G. to the manner born. “And, Toddles, can’t you keep from dancing behind the bowler’s arm?”

If the best bowler in England thought he was going to catch his sister napping a second time he was the victim of a grievous error. His yorkers had no terrors for her now. She got her bat down to every individual one, and had the temerity to block one so hard that she scored a single off it. She played a watchful and not altogether unscientific game, and despite the fact that three men were on the onside watching the case on behalf of the cucumber frame, she caused the bowling to be changed four times, and stayed in fifty minutes for sixteen. And the manner of her dismissal was decidedly unlucky. The gallant Artilleryman going on with his lobs as a last resource, his sister was no longer able to restrain her ardent soul: she got in a really fine straight in the manner of her brother Archie, whereon running in hard from the library windows, the little parson effected[210] one of the finest catches ever witnessed on the Rectory lawn.

Contrary to expectation the finish was desperately close. Through my ignorance of the ground I had the misfortune to be run out for a duck. Toddles, who succeeded, shaped beautifully, his wrist work and knife-like cutting being a theme for general admiration. After contributing three singles and a two, however, he lost his wicket in a somewhat humiliating way. Grace, fielding mid-off, had by no means forgiven him for his wonderful catch, and was evidently, to judge by her concentrated look, biding her time. Presently, the little parson smashed one right at her all along the carpet at a great pace. Mid-off’s disturbed expression, and the quick way in which she turned round apparently to pursue, clearly indicated that she had been guilty of misfielding, and had allowed the ball to pass her. The unsuspecting Toddles started for a run, whereon the fieldsman like a flash of light produced the missing ball from the infinite recesses of her skirts, returned it hard and true, and the wicket-keeper had the little parson out by about two yards.

“I’ll teach you to refuse Halliday, and then take me, when you wouldn’t a’ got to mine at all if you hadn’t been such a quick-footed little brute,” cried Mid-off in triumph.

[211]Although it was one of the most flagrant cases of deception that either Middlesex or Gloucestershire had ever seen practised, the unfortunate Toddles had undoubtedly received his quietus.

“Just the sort o’ thing a girl would do,” said T. S. M. “Beas’ly bad form, I call it.”

“Let this be a warning to you, Tommy,” said Miss Grace, who actually seemed to be exulting in her act. “As you’re so young, Kent’s certain to try it on Monday. Toddles will, for one.”

“It’s worse than the Cambridge no-ball dodge,” said Carteret, coming in last man to bat.

The finish proved exciting to a degree. Carteret was a first-class bat in every way, who had a fine eye, and came down very hard on the ball. Despite the correctness of the fielding, and the fine length that Charlie kept, Gloucestershire won by one wicket.

As W. G. led the victorious eleven back to the remains of the strawberries and cream, our representative understood the Champion to remark:—

“I’ve said all along that this very toney, classy Middlesex team had only got to be tackled fair for the stitches to come undone, and the sawdust to begin to trickle. Two lickings in succession’s pretty thick, ain’t it, Stoddy? You two’ll stay to dinner of course?”

“Charmed,” said I promptly. And then in a[212] judicious aside to George, “But what price togs? Riding breeches and a flannel shirt, don’t you know!”

“Don’t fag with dressing when we’re on our own, do we boys,” said the consummate Grace, who had an alertness that was as perfect as her frankness. “The Guv’nor’s good as gold, especially in summer. It’s only when the Bishop brings his Mary, or there’s a bit of a slap-up dinner party on, which I sometimes let the Guv’nor have if his behaviour’s been very beautiful, well then, of course, we have to buck up a bit, and try to look pretty.”

“Ever so easy in your case,” said I.

Alas! it fell on perfectly deaf ears.

WHILE eight men were scrubbing themselves in the bath-room prior to the dinner bell, their behaviour, as is only too usual when eight men are trying to do the same thing at the same time, was not too lady-like. Their talk also was breezy and of a rather penetrating kind.

“If Brightside’s not here to-night with intent,” said Elphinstone, in his slow, clerical sing-song, in the middle of a free fight round a bath-towel, “you can call me American. I’ve been looking at Brightside, and I’m certain that he meditates making a silly ass of himself.”

“Do you, Brightside?” I cried, with deep feeling.

“Oh, damn,” said the Optimist coarsely. But his complexion was becoming a fine tawny.

“He’s going through with it to-night though, if it kills him,” said the wicked little parson.

“More likely to kill her,” said Carteret.

[214]“Matter of opinion,” said the little parson: “but one can’t help respecting Brightside. No earthly and all that, he knows, but I’m certain that he’s going to cause Grace to become a sister to him.”

“So there!” said Carteret.

“We call ’em the Bougheys, you know,” said the wicked little parson, in a disgustingly confidential tone, “in affectionate remembrance of that noble idiot over the way. ’Comes here every fortnight now to get Grace’s opinion as to what marl he should put on his wickets in the winter, and whether in her opinion grass seeds are superior to new turf, or vice versa. She’s a sister to him, his step-sister, his sister-in-law, his deceased wife’s sister, his aunt, his grandmother, his niece, his cousin, his second cousin; and our dear, delightful Grace now spends her time in inventing new relationships, as she’s quite used up the Prayer-book. Last time he came she promised to be his Prussian cousin. I don’t doubt that in the end she’ll be his murderess. Isn’t it a pity that the English aristocracy has no sense of humour? And from what that man Comfort told me at lunch, I rather fear that Dimsdale is also to have an attack of incipient dam silliness.”

“It’s coming; I can feel it,” said I, with brazen effrontery. “Brown holland’s kept me awake all night; and the encouraging part of it is, I feel as[215] though I shall never sleep again until I’ve converted myself into a form of common amusement.”

“Well, here’s my sympathy, old man,” said Charlie, hurling a missile at me, which I mistakenly thought was nothing more serious than a loofah. But the moment it crashed against my cheek-bone I suddenly arrived at the conclusion that there must be a cake of brown Windsor carefully wrapped inside it.

It is rather a pity that I don’t wield the pen of Truthful James, considering what transpired when I mistakenly attempted to discuss the matter with the man who had thrown the soap. But as Charlie had the brute force of a bullock, and didn’t know his strength, in less than a minute I was very sorry that I had chosen to grapple with him. Had it not been that the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, who was really a most intrepid little man, used his feet and elbows freely, at the crucial moment, on the best bowler in England’s sacred person, I should have been killed undoubtedly.

When the interested bystanders had repaired these breaches of the peace by a liberal application of cold water and hard epithets, the bell summoned us to dinner. We were in no position to obey it, however, until I had borrowed a collar from Charlie to replace the one that he had torn in two, and until my brave friend, the little[216] parson, had changed his shirt, as the one that now adorned him had been exceeding mutilated. Charlie himself, who was as hard as steel, and wiry as a mustang, was much as he was before this lamentable affair, except that he was now breathing through his mouth instead of through his nose.

“There’s really no hurry, Toddles, you know,” said Archie, while that ornament of the Church sponged the blood from his teeth. “It’s only ten minutes since the bell went, and if there’s one thing the Guv does thoroughly enjoy, it is for a curate to come between him and his dinner. And it would make us all so sorrowful if you were to forfeit his high opinion, for we all feel that you will never be able to impose on anybody else. Besides, you won’t be in time to say the grace, you bloody little ruffian!”

Despite this prediction, however, the Rector continued to be courtesy itself. No doubt this was his habit, as he certainly possessed some magnetic quality that caused his high-spirited family to regard him with affectionate awe. Miss Grace, herself the highest spirited of them all, might be said to worship him. In the words of Archie, “The Guv’nor might be the inventor of cricket,” such was the estimation in which his daughter held him. As for that adorable person, she was[217] apparently as much at home in the dining-room as in the tented field. She could play the hostess as easily as she could play the game. She indicated the course of the talk with a brisk tact that would have commended itself to the professional hostesses of Carlton House Terrace, and in her décolleté white silk looked an angel, if a somewhat highly developed one. Her bowling arm was particularly noticeable, but that didn’t bother her a bit. It might be that Miss Grace’s amiability enabled us to dispense with our war-paint, but Miss Grace’s sex absolutely forbade her to dispense with hers.

“Any of you men thought of the Sillenger yet?” she began with the soup. “Fancy ‘Kensit’ myself rather.”

“I’ve a leaning towards ‘Helbeck of Bannisdale,’” said the little curate.

“Naturally,” Miss Grace said. “But he wasn’t even placed in the Derby. You take my tip, Toddles, he’s a rotter.”

“Laura,” said the Rector, “I am very sorry to hear you employ such an amount of slang. In my opinion it is a most offensive habit, particularly in women.”

“Well, you see, Father,” said his ingenuous daughter, “it’s a short way of saying a lot. Besides, the boys use it.”

“Boys are barbarians,” said her parent.

[218]“Oh, they are,” said Miss Grace. “Well, I think barbarians aren’t half bad. Anyhow, I like what they like, so I s’pose I’m a bit of a barbarian too.”

“Jennings,” said Archie, “serve the claret cup, quick! Grace, we’re going to drink your thundering good health.”

We drank it with rare cordiality. The poor, dear Optimist who was seated at my side had such an agitated hand that a portion of the contents of his glass overflowed upon the cloth.

“You’ve spilt your luck,” said Toddles, in a melancholy undertone.

The Optimist’s condition was indeed to be deplored. The meal was wholly excellent in its unpretentiousness; yet here was this young man, who knew what dining was, utterly unable to appreciate his chance. The way in which he toyed with and disdained fare that could meet the needs of a parson with a palate was tragical indeed. As for me, I was in a humour of sheer devilry. Now I have no wish to bristle with wise saws and modern instances, or even to be suspected of an epigram, but it always seems to me that when emotion overtakes him, a man is either an ox or a giddy ox. I am the latter, and I think when I come to be hanged that I shall go to the gallows whistling. For such is the amount of coarse,[219] brutal, downright British bull-dog that has gone to the formation of my character, that I was able to eat, drink, and let my soul flow at the festive board, well knowing that those indescribably subtle symptoms that had been born so recently within me were growing more inconvenient hour by hour. Looking at the glorious Miss Grace, and the fine figure of a girl she made, and comparing her to the two very, very average men who were in imminent danger, if you will please pardon the outworn image, of fluttering to their doom like moths; comparing her, I say—oh, hang it, what do I say? But there, Impatient Reader, you know what makes my mind so mixed, and why it’s muddling my prose. Or if you don’t, I think you will know, one day, since there comes a moment in the career of every average man—oh, what am I saying?—really, Reader, I had no intention to be rude!—when the sense of one’s own indescribability is really so indescribable that one must feel it before it can be felt—oh damn!

Reader, I am sure I beg your pardon. But you understand me, don’t you? To-night I had dwindled into the condition that I have so lucidly described. Here was I, a mere cub, with only a big appetite and the most animal health to recommend me, looking down a dinner-table towards the One Girl in the World. True, I had sound[220] lungs, a nice wrist for cutting, an eye as clear as Grace’s own, and was mercifully free of the curse of intellect in any form whatever; but surely even such fine attributes as these are not too princely when laid at the feet of the Goddess. No doubt Richard Cranford Dimsdale was a pretty harmless sort of fellow, but an astonishing quantity of harmlessness goes to the making of a husband.

Above all, I knew these speculations to be cheek of the worst kind; but if a horrid, impish little clergyman sits opposite, and regards one with a gaze of pure, rapturous pity, and talks in a holy undertone of that man Comfort, and what that man Comfort said, and what a privilege it is to converse with a person of his polished manners and width of outlook, it is not always possible for one to marshal one’s meditations into the channels of decency. As for the poor, dear Optimist, he suffered to a like extent from the indefatigable Toddles. The cheerful wretch writhed through the meal, and, of course, the moment he tried to deliver a kick under the table to Toddles, he fetched the Rector a crack on the knee. But in the matter of our peerless hostess, the Optimist and I effusively agreed with one another that we were both equally impossible. We were simply indulging in the dangerous amusement of skating over thin ice just for the pleasure of hearing it crack, and the cold water[221] gurgle under our feet. The Optimist has long been regarded as a past master in the art of partaking of unexpected joys. It is recorded of him that he has been known to tip an umpire after being leg before, and to make a pun on being run out.

Dessert over, Miss Grace withdrew. Immediately afterwards the Rector retired to his den.

“What’s it to be—‘pills’ or poker?” said Charlie, as the rest of us lingered over the coffee and cigars.

“Brightside looks so quietly happy,” said Toddles at last audible to all, “that to begin with, he might minister to the enjoyment of life by standing on his head, or otherwise making his ecstasy articulate. He looks like one who has built a philosophy upon his sorrow.”

Never, ere now, had I seen the Optimist positively strain after cheerfulness. It was an impressive sight. But is it not strange the vast difference there is in the constitution of the most common men? For I was indecently hilarious. I laughed myself to tears over my own stories, unblushing chestnuts as they were.

“For your information, Brightside,” said the little parson, “Grace is a good girl, who goes to bed at ten. It is now nine-twenty. Therefore if you desire to compliment her to-night, you’ve got to buck up!”

[222]“Do you men take me for a common jay?” said the Optimist. “Do you think I don’t know exactly how big I bulge in this great universe? Not for J. Brightside, thank you. If he were going out with Stoddart, it might be otherwise; but his batting’s really too steep!”

“Brightside,” said the persevering little parson, “we’re deceived in you. We thought you were a man with g—,—with an interior.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” the Optimist said; “but I recognise my limitations, thank you. Don’t fancy myself a Ranjy quite.”

“But women are that funny,” said the little parson, “one don’t know exactly how they’ll act.”

“You mayn’t,” said the Optimist. “I do. They leave undone the things they ought to have done, and do the things they ought not to have done.”

“Grace’ll accept you then!” said Carteret. He had the air of a man who has found himself out in saying a smart thing.

Impatient Reader, I am aware that this is very impossible considered as talk, and very contemptible considered as wit; but even county cricketers can do no better in a dry season. The long spells of fielding are too much, even for their magnificent physiques. It must be admitted that in very wet years, such as ’79 and ’88, when the bowlers have made hay, they are occasionally heard to[223] quote Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Hall Caine, and poor dear Mr. Shakespeare. At all other times their quotations can be traced to the Pink ’Un.

Finding that there had been a “slump” in the Optimist’s courage, the mischievous little parson was good enough to honour me with some attention.

“My dear Dimsdale,” he purred, “we are hoping that for the honour of Little Clumpton you’re not going to funk.”

“Hickory’ll lay five to two he does,” said Carteret.

“Oh, if you are going to make it a sort of international affair,” said I protestingly. But all the same these cunning men were trapping me. And to crown all, the one person I counted on to lend me his aid, betrayed me basely and played into the hands of the other side.

“My dear chap,” the benevolent Optimist said, “I’ve known Grace from her earliest youth, but I am perfectly willing to waive the priority of my claim. Perfectly willing, as I cannot too explicitly state. I recognise my limitations. But you, my dear Dimsdale, are one of those big-gutted Britons who runs this little earth, the sun, the moon, and the planetary system for the private amusement of himself and a few of his English friends. You are of the fibre to go in and win.”

[224]“Besides, we’ve all great confidence in Little Clumpton in the ultimate,” said the complimentary little parson; “and we know that when Dimsdale gets his blood up he’s the doggedest swashbuckler that ever said, ‘What ho!’”

The effusiveness of my aiders and abettors made me squirm.

“You’ve got to do it now,” said the Optimist. “Since the affair has become another Little Clumpton v. Hickory, you must do something for your side, you know, particularly as you were the only single figure man yesterday.”

“Must try and get into the doubles, old chap,” said the little parson coaxingly.

“Deuced pleasant outlook,” said I. “Shouldn’t care if I’d played for the county once; but a mere club-man—ugh!”

“She may be rather rude,” said Toddles. “Cool cheek makes some girls stick their fur up. Or she mayn’t, of course. Might let you down ever so gently, as she’s had a lot of experience.”

“A word in your ear,” said the Optimist. “Whatever you do, don’t play the goose game. Hard slogging’s the sort o’ thing for Grace. That’s where that owl, Boughey, always comes such a cropper. Will spread himself so.”

“Boughey will lisp in numbers, you know,” said Carteret. “Overflows with it, the idiot! and[225] makes old Grace so riled that she chucks the beautiful calf-bound poetry books he brings her regularly at his head. I’ve seen Boughey come out bleeding in other places than his heart. Whatever you do, my gallant, give a wide berth to the Bodlihead.”

“Your views are a great privilege, I’m sure,” said I.

Truth to tell, the more I saw of their game, the less I liked it. My sentiments, to which the wretched Comfort had given such an unpleasant publicity, were doubtless receiving this amount of attention that the conspirators might score all round. They were certainly scoring off me, and the idea came into my head that they were scoring off Miss Grace’s brothers also. For that quartette smoked with a steady enjoyment that was designed to show their complete indifference to the topic under discussion. Judging by the excessive disinterestedness of their mien, they were not even aware of its delicate character.

“Devilish well-bred of you fellows to be so full of dolce far niente,” said the unblushing barrister. “Quite the right thing, of course; but we do wish you’d be rather more keenly alive to your responsibilities. Your knowledge of Grace’s pretty little ways under fire might be simply invaluable to Dimsdale. Simply invaluable. And[226] you know you would never forgive yourselves if our ingenuous Dimsdale got badly mauled through lacking that expert advice that you are so well qualified to give him.”

“What’s the speech about, Jimmy?” asked Archie. “Is it on Ritualism, or are you practising the art of addressing the jury?”

“This intellectual obsession is sad,” said Toddles. “Dimsdale has decided to propose to Grace, who we have reason to believe is a connection of yours. We are now forming ourselves into a committee that has for its object the protection of Dimsdale. The problem we are called upon to settle at this stage is, whether it would be safer for him to prosecute his addresses in a suit of mail, or is she likely to be sufficiently overawed if he goes armed with a six-shooter only. Archie, the committee would be glad to have your views.”

“Dimsdale,” said that oracle, turning to me, “I don’t know who’s put you up to this, but whoever they are they’re not humane.”

“They ought to be kicked,” said George.

“He’s in a big enough funk already, without you men doing your little bit,” said the Optimist.

Everybody, with one exception, was enjoying the fun immensely. I was the exception. It is not nice to be at the mercy of one’s intimates. But now by some mysterious means I was delivered[227] into their hands. One can scarcely expect the average man to join in the laugh against himself in such circumstances. They were so delicate. Indeed, only rude coarse men would be capable of creating them. And to a person of sensibility, they were aggravated by the presence of Grace’s arrogant male relations. Never a doubt that they were arrogant. They, in common with the conspirators, seemed quite unable to treat me with respect. And at least I thought that that justice should be granted to me, for a man who has been awake all night feels entitled to some little consideration.

“Sir Knight,” said the little parson, “I would fain remind thee that ’tis now nine-forty by this my good chronometer. Twenty minutes hence the divinity retireth.”

This specific mention seemed to lend additional flavour to their chaff. They were getting up my blood. And when that is thoroughly aroused, I enjoy the character of being a somewhat headstrong person. Therefore when at a quarter to ten I discarded my cigar, finished my coffee, and quietly announced that I was going to face the music, they ought not to have been as staggered as they were.

“What now?” they shouted.

“Oui, oui,” said I, stepping to the door.

[228]“Look here,” said the alarmed Archie, “this is beyond a joke.”

“By, by,” said I; “see you later.”

“Look here,” said Miss Grace’s military brother, “no dam foolery, Dimsdale. Sit down and finish your cigar. Toddles, if you don’t hold your tongue I’ll choke you. This has gone too far.”

“I’ll lay a ‘pony’ that Dimsdale don’t do it,” said Carteret.

“Done,” said I.

“You can call that ‘pony’ squandered, Jimmy,” said the Optimist, with tears of gladness in his eyes.

“Isn’t it gaudy?” said the little parson rapturously. “Isn’t it ger-lor-i-ous?”

But even at this late hour I don’t think any of them quite realized the finality of my resolve. For when I got so far as to open the door, they were one and all so thunderstruck that they could not say a word. It was only when with an assumption of bravado that I flippantly commended myself to their prayers, and walked out of the room, that they set up a positive howl of laughter. I am not sure, though, whether it was not rather hollow.

As for myself, I might have a dim consciousness that my folly was colossal, yet this in no wise deterred me. If I am at any time goaded[229] into action, no matter how indefinite its nature, it is no part of my character to stop halfway; therefore it was in a devil-may-care, hands-in-the-pockets, two-o’clock-in-the-morning fashion that I sauntered into the library, incredibly impudent of mien.

MISS GRACE was seated at the table under the lamp, and I was a trifle discomfited to find that a very palpable frown was disfiguring her mobile brow.

“Nineteen from forty-one, quick!” she cried, without looking up. And as I answered, after due thought, “Twenty-three, I mean twenty-four; no, I mean twenty-two,” she lifted her head to say,—

“Thanks so much”; and added, “Hullo! it’s you, is it, Dimmy? Don’t mind me calling you Dimmy, do you? Rather a nice easy, slipping kind of a name is Dimmy, isn’t it, Dimmy? Besides, I can’t always be saying Mr., can I? as though I were a pro.”

“If you’ll allow me to call you Grace,” said I, “that’ll be all right.”

“You can call me anything you just please,” said she, “as long as it isn’t Laura. I hate Laura.”

[231]“I have known some very pretty Lauras,” said I.

“Now look here, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace fiercely, “how on earth can I bring the first-class averages up to date if you keep talking? Stanley Jackson’s in a frightful tangle as it is. If you want a book, take it and cut, and close the door quietly.”

“Sorry,” said I, “horribly sorry. But may I help you?”

“Awfully glad if you would,” said she. “I shall never get done to-night. Oh, hang it! the wire from the Oval’s not here yet. Confound ’em!”

Approaching the table, I was now able to observe what her occupation was. She was busily engaged in deducing facts and figures from a litter of telegrams, and transferring them to formidable sheets of foolscap. My look was too perplexed to be ignored.

“Rather a good idea,” she explained. “As we can’t get an evening paper in these parts, anyhow, we arrange for ‘the close of the day’s play’ to be wired from the county grounds.”

“Why don’t you wait for the morning papers?” I asked.

“Morning papers, indeed!” said Miss Grace witheringly. “How do you s’pose I’m going to[232] get to sleep if I don’t know what the boys have done? Why, Archie might have bagged a brace, or Charlie might have got his hundred.”

“I didn’t think of that,” I said penitently. “But surely it’s not absolutely necessary for you to work out the averages every night, when by the payment of the ridiculously inadequate sum of one penny you can get trained journalists to do it for you?”

“Oh, I like to be knowing,” she said. “It’s not absolutely necessary, of course, but I can’t rest somehow till I’ve got the principal men reckoned up to date. That little beggar Bobby Abel will keep trying to get his nose in front of Archie, and then Albert Ward and Gunn are always treading on his heels. Then Tom Richardson and Briggs are putting in all they know to knock Charlie off his perch. It’s not all jam, I can tell you, having brothers who are such tremendous swells. All the world will keep looking at ’em, and if one of ’em’s a bit below himself, out comes the Daily Chronicle with a picture in five colours of A. H. Trentham’s deplorable exhibition at Old Trafford yesterday, and yarns of that sort. It comes jolly hard on a girl, I can tell you, Dimmy, if you’ve kept ’em on brine baths and a training diet all the week, and then one of ’em goes and blots his copy-book like that.”

[233]“From what I hear,” said I, “it’s nothing but your diligence and motherly behaviour to ’em that’s made ’em as famous as they are.”

“I don’t say that,” remarked the modest Grace, but her expression said that this judicious statement was not unpleasing. “But I deserve a little bit of credit for their fame. The amount of watching that they take is something awful; Charlie in particular. At times Charlie’s just heart-breaking. Sometimes I can’t sleep for thinking of him!”

Had the best bowler at either ’Varsity since Sammy Woods been just then in my place and heard his sister’s long-drawn sigh and seen her pronounced tendency to tears, I’m certain that that robust sinner would have gone down on his knees before her and prayed for a remission of his sins. I think I never was more touched.

“What a shame!” said I.

“He’s so careless,” she said; “can’t restrain himself, you know; and he don’t feel his responsibilities a bit. He don’t care a pin about his average. ’Might be the ordinaryest bowler that ever was, instead of Charlie Trentham. Bought him a Whiteley exerciser for his birthday, but he uses all his spare time in whistling and playing ‘pills,’ instead of getting up his muscle and his stamina.”

“He must be a great trial,” said I, working the[234] sympathetic vein for all that it was worth. I think, though, the Great Trial would have had a fit had he been privileged to hear me.

“Yes, Dimmy, that’s exactly what he is—he is a trial,” said poor Miss Grace. “If he’d only got a bit of head, I wouldn’t care. He’s got the courage of a lion, never knows when he’s licked and all that, and his muscles are just lovely; but as for intellect, you’ve only got to treat him to a drink to make him your friend for ever. And I don’t think he knows what two and two make, either. Here’s an instance now: he actually invites down that wicked little Toddles, when he’s going to play for Middlesex against Kent on Monday. And what does that wicked little Toddles do? Like the giddy goat I am, I didn’t sit up and see ’em all to bed, as I mean to do to-night, but left ’em up with a promise of ‘We shan’t be long.’ But weren’t they! Well, I lay awake and listened for ’em, but never heard a sound. When the clock struck two, I got up and dressed, and came down to see what they were up to. There were those three beautiful brothers o’ mine, who are playing against Kent on Monday, having a hand at poker with Jimmy Carteret, whilst the Rev. Mr. Toddles, if you please, was mixing their drinks. An owl would see the Rev. Mr. Toddles’s little game. He means to have Charlie as stale as anything by Monday, and[235] Archie’s liver wrong. But I told Master Curate precisely what I thought about him, and gave him the straight tip, too, that if he did manage to get the boys crocked for Monday, he should have a pretty thick dose of Keating’s vermin-killer in his soup, the little insect! Yes,” she concluded, with grim determination, “if I never get to bed at all, I’ll see that there are no more larks like this to-night. In my opinion, Dimmy, all men are blackguards!”

“Oh, my dear Grace!” I cried, with a face of agony.

“No, old chap, I didn’t mean quite that,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I hope I’ve not hurt you.”

Her penitence was charming.

Now I could see that she was much distressed in mind in regard to the behaviour of her wayward charges. She was longing for a little sympathy. What a golden opportunity! How the Fates were playing into my hands!

“My dear Grace,” said I, “you are much too good to these ungrateful beggars.”

“They are not ungrateful, and they are not beggars,” said their sister; “they’re awful good sorts, every one of ’em, and don’t you dare to say they’re not, Dimmy, or you and I’ll quarrel. It’s Toddles who’s so bad.”

“Toddles is a little pig,” said I, feeling the repulse[236] was terrible, and yet striving to retreat in good order.

“Oh no, he’s not,” said Miss Grace; “that’s just where you’re wrong. Toddles is a dear little chap. I just love Toddles. It’s only his fun.”

“Just a girl all over!” I cried, my patience ending in the masculine manner with a snap; “just a girl. Say one thing and mean another; contradict themselves ten times in as many ticks, and then blame us for failing to understand ’em.”

“Don’t you get excited, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace; “but get on with your work. Just check those Brighton figures, will you? There, you’ve gone and got Billy Murdoch down forty-seven instead o’ forty-three; and you’ve missed Georgie Brann out altogether.”

“I call that cool,” said I, “seeing that you copied ’em out yourself.”

“Well, didn’t I tell you to check ’em?” said she. “Now look here, Dimmy, either drop your rotting, and buckle to, or just clear out and leave me on my own.”

“I will be good,” said I meekly.

But really my position was ludicrous. I had been with her twenty minutes already, yet my high purpose had not been even broached. I had missed several chances. I felt my brazenness to be subsiding. If I didn’t make a start at once, I should[237] get into a funk, and smirch the name of Little Clumpton and become the common mock of Hickory. Yet how could I begin? Any little bravado I might have had at the start was already slain by the sense of the egregious errors I had committed. The only course open was to fall back on my nationality. Was it not lucky that I prided myself on my Anglo-Saxon fibre and directness? Let me say what I meant exactly. Hard slogging, and not the goose game, as became a Briton, don’t you know.

“Now then, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace, “the Bristol figures are not on the ceiling; they’re on the table. Just call ’em out while I dot ’em down. Go on.”

“Grace, senior,” I read, “not out, one hundred and sixty-eight. Oh, and that reminds me, Grace, that I’ve got something serious to say.”

“Of course,” said she; “but you look what you’re doing, or I shall have something serious to say as well.”

“Grace,” said I, standing up, “I’ve got something extremely serious to say.”

That young person put her pencil down so gently that the restraint she used was noticeable. The light in her eye made me quiver.

“Grace,” said I, and came to a sudden stop. Yes, sitting down was decidedly better. It didn’t[238] seem so formal, and your legs didn’t feel so wobbly. I sat down accordingly. “Grace,” said I once more; and then my throat went wrong, and I had to pause and cough.

“Yes,” said Grace meekly, “I s’pose my name’s Grace. Go on, Dimmy; it’s ever so interesting. But if it’s a joke, Dimmy, it’s not at all obvious. Just read those Bristol figures out, there’s a good chap.”

I picked up the telegram again, and called out solemnly,—

“R. C. Dimsdale, bowled Grace, none.”

Miss Grace’s steady gaze went through me, then came back and went through me again.

“Look here, Dimmy,” she said, with a deliberation that was both incisive and well weighed, “I’m not going to be ragged like this by you or anybody else. Give me that wire, and now you just cut. When I want to be bored, I read Punch.”

It was evident by the rigidity of her countenance that she saw not the remotest connection between what I had said and the terribly great matter that was overbalancing my mind.

“I must explain,” said I doggedly.

“I don’t think you will,” said she gravely; “that thing with a handle to it, Dimmy, is called a door. If you open it, you will see the way out the other side.”

[239]“Thanks so much,” said I; “but then, you see, I’m not going. I’ve got so much to say, Grace, that really——”

“My dear Dimmy,” she interrupted, “if you would only tell me where it hurts you, I might give you a pick-me-up or something to set you straight.”

“It is in your power,” said I.

“That’s all right,” said Grace cheerfully; “now let’s have it. If it’s a cold, it’s compo; if it’s sleeplessness, it’s potassium bromide; if it’s nerves, it’s rest; if it’s a strain, it’s Elliman.”

“It’s a strain,” said I.

“Good old strain!” said Grace. “Thought it must be a strain.”

“Of the heart!” said I.

“Next, please,” said Grace. “Whoever heard of a chap straining his heart? Why, Charlie, who lams ’em down like anything, has never strained his heart.”

“He has not my delicate organization, you see,” said I. “He’s as strong as a bullock, and just about as susceptible. I, my dear Grace, am much more delicately constituted. In fact, my dear Grace, in fact——” Emotion drowned, however, what was to have been a nicely rounded period.

Miss Grace sighed, set down her pencil for the second time, propped her chin on her hands, and[240] said with almost tearful resignation, “What are you saying, Dimmy?”

I rose to my feet, for, after all, that was the better way, as in a sitting posture one was unable to obtain the fierce energy that this miserable business undoubtedly demanded. Therefore, springing to my feet, I said,—

“I mean just this, Grace. You’ve gone and bowled me neck and heels.”

“Why, you said just now,” said she, “that you had strained your heart.”

“Yes,” said I, eagerly but crudely, “my heart’s strained as well. And you’ve gone and clean bowled me. Now put two and two together, Grace. Surely you must see what I mean.”

“No, I’ll go to Klondyke if I do,” said Grace, in despair. “Your heart strained—clean bowled. No, I’ll go to Klondyke if I do! Is it a riddle?”

“A riddle,” said I, much hurt. “Oh, my dear Grace, if you only knew how serious I am! I’ll own that I’m not expressing myself very clearly. Hang it! a fellow’s not used to this sort o’ thing. I know I’m a blithering ass, you know. Oh, Grace, dash it all! you must see what I mean!”

“Blithering ass!” murmured Grace, as if to herself. “You are getting a bit more enlightening, Dimmy.”

“No, no,” I said hastily; “you’re on the wrong[241] tack. That’s not what I want you to see. You know! you know!”

“Dimmy,” said Grace, with her marvellous blue eyes getting wider, “I shall be downright annoyed with you in a minute. You say I know when I don’t know; and when I do know, you say that I don’t know. If this is a rag, Dimmy, it’s very wicked of you, ’cause my time’s occupied. These jolly averages’ll never get done to-night. Do be a good boy and go. There, I’ve put the Old Man down wrong! Dimmy, I shall be most horribly angry in a minute.”

“Oh, drop this bally cricket!” I cried. “Do try to think of serious things a little, Grace; do try to think of what I’m saying. I do wish you’d attend to what a fellow’s saying, and help him out a bit.”

“I’d help you out with great pleasure, Dimmy, very great pleasure, I can assure you, Dimmy,” she said, “if I’d only got a boot like Charlie’s.”

“Oh, Grace!” I cried, “how obtuse you are!”

“That’s it, call me names,” said she.

Here a dreadfully painful silence came. It was only disturbed by the aggressive behaviour of my heart and the scratching of Miss Grace’s pencil. Never in my life had I felt such an unmitigated ruffian, and certainly never a more uncompromising idiot. Doesn’t it seem absurd,[242] considering the amount of totally unnecessary things one learns at school—Latin, Greek, and so forth—that the gentlemen of England are utterly untrained in one of the most complex and delicate sciences that ever has to be practised by the human male? Oh, for a few of the most rudimentary hints as to how to conduct a proposal! Lord! what is a fellow to do when the object of his passion is busily occupied with the preparation of cricket averages, and not paying the least attention to his distraught manner, or the gentle hints conveyed in his conversation?

There was the wretched Grace, apparently overjoyed at this lull in the proceedings, jotting down figures with a haste that can only be described as feverish, tossing telegrams about and looking really dangerous to talk to. Very encouraging state of affairs, considering that the sum total of my eloquence was spent already. But the Briton in me, after a two minutes’ interval, set doggedly to work once more.

“Grace,” I re-opened, “I’m not a county man an’ all that, you know. I’m not a Stoddy or a Ranjy, you know. Not a W. G., you know. I’m not a Toddles or an Archie, you know. You know that, Grace, don’t you?”

“Oh, rats!” said Grace, figuring away more feverishly than ever.

[243]“Ah, but it’s not rats,” said I. “It’s not rats at all. It’s far too serious for rats, I can assure you, Grace. It’s something very serious, Grace.”

“That’s all right,” said Grace, with supreme indifference; and then, biting her pencil and puckering up her brow, she said: “How many times does fourteen go into ninety-seven? Quick!”

“I’m not a ready-reckoner,” said I indignantly.

“You are a jolly rotter, Dimmy, that’s what you are,” said Grace urbanely.

“Thanks,” said I; “how nice!” Then, having felt the spur a bit, I took a headlong plunge almost before I knew what I was about. “Grace,” said I, “will you be my wife?”

“I’ll be your anything,” said Grace, without looking up, and continuing her pencilling, “if you’ll just have the goodness to clear out and pull the door to gently. O-oh, I say! The Old Man’s average is forty-three now. He’s gone up nine places. He’s in front of Ranjy.”

I beat my boots on the carpet incontinently. If this was the usual style of a girl when a man pays her the highest compliment within his power, God help all of us, say I.

“Grace,” said I weakly, “I hope you’re listening.”

“Hullo!” said Grace, searching frantically[244] among her mass of telegrams, “they haven’t sent the Taunton yet. And where’s the jolly old Oval got to? It’s always late. They’re dreadfully slack to-night, though. Half a mind to write to Lord Salisbury about it.”

“Grace,” said I, more weakly than before, “I don’t believe you are listening. I—I—I’m asking you to be my—my wife.”

I beg to be excused the poverty of my diction, but really if I had not spoken in the most unsophisticated fashion, I was rapidly getting into such a state of nerves that I do not think I should have spoken ever.

“Grace,” I said again, as she had paid no heed, and this time thumping on the table with my hand, that her polite attention might be attracted somehow. “My wife—you—my wife—I want you to be my wife—see!”

“Thanks awf’ly,” said Grace. “Awf’ly good—marvellously good. Dimmy, what a clever chap you are! Just let me set John Dixon straight, and then I’ll laugh. Positive I’ll laugh.”

“Hang John Dixon!”

“We shall do nothing of the kind,” said Grace. “He’s one o’ the best, is Johnny.”

“Grace,” I said abjectly, “I—I’m proposing to you—want you to be my wife, you know. Most awf’ly obliged if you will, you know.”

[245]“All right, Dimmy; half a mo’. I’m certain that I’ll laugh. Thirteen from thirty leaves sixteen, don’t it?”

Her pencil continued in its scratching at a most outrageous rate.

“Pononner,” I repeated, “if you’ll have me, Grace, pononner I shall be most awf’ly, beastly obliged, don’t you know!”

It was dreadfully hard luck that at this moment, just when I had lashed myself into a perfervid and poetic heat, and a note of true passion had accordingly come into my tone, that the library door was seen to come open suddenly, if stealthily, and a magnificent being appeared, bearing a salver with more telegrams thereon.

“What, three!” cried Grace excitedly. “One’s from the Oval, the other’s Taunton; but what’s the third? Only expecting two. How funny! Yet they’re all addressed ‘Trentham, Hickory’ right enough. Did he say what made him so late, Augustus? Was he very drunk?”

“Hextrahordinary hintoxicated, Miss,” said Augustus, retiring with a sniff.

How cruel were the Fates! Here was I just playing myself in, getting nicely set, as it were, and beginning to feel at home, when the arrival of these beastly telegrams simply banished me and my remarks from Grace’s mind. And this[246] was the more annoying since I had spent fifty minutes in battering her into listening to what I had to say.

“Surrey 401 for 6,” Grace was saying, as she tore out the contents of the first. “Warwickshire’s getting beans, as usual. Hooray! Bobby Abel, run out, 17. That’s a scotch in his wheel! It’ll drop him three places. Brockwell, 109. Tom Hayward, 82. Jephson, 54. Key, not out, 100 exactly. Good of you, Kingsmill! Awf’ly pleased! Do you heaps of good!”

I was biting my lips in the meantime and saying, “My dear Grace,” at intervals, in so thin a voice that it went entirely unheeded. The unhappy thing was my conscientiousness. For I felt that I should not be justified in calling my pitiful efforts a veritable proposal, since Grace had persisted in regarding them as nothing more consequent than a feeble joke in rather questionable taste. But, cost what it might, I was going to see the matter through, having once embarked upon it.

“Hampshire, 203 all out,” Grace continued. “Somerset, 115 for 5. Wicket must be fiery; yet it shouldn’t be. Wonder if they’ve watered it? Something’s up. Shouldn’t get out like that ’gainst that sort o’ bowling. Wynyard, 70. Oh, and Vernon Hill 42, not out. Tyler, 6 wickets for 90. They’ve been watering the wicket, that’s what[247] they’ve been doing. And now for the third. Hanged if I can tell where it’s from. All the cricket’s come. I’ll open it, though, as my name’s Trentham.”

“It might be for somebody else, as there’s one or two other people called Trentham in addition to yourself,” said I, trying to introduce a word by hook or by crook, and being also in that perverted condition of mind when a man longs to say something with a bit of a sting in it.

“Really!” said she. “How clever of you to have thought of that, Dimmy! But as ‘Trentham, Hickory’s’ me as much as anybody else, here goes!”

Now as the contents of this telegram had so dire an effect on the industrious Miss Grace, and the results of it were so far-reaching, I think it only right that it should have a chapter all to itself.

THE third telegram ran to this tenour,—

“If Hawke wants you for India, sing slow. You are going with me. Stoddart.”

Miss Grace had a mounting colour as she read this, and I believe swimming eyes and a reeling brain. I think she would have liked to weep for joy.

“Oh, Dimmy,” she said, “isn’t it divine! Isn’t it noble of old Stoddy! But I knew it, I knew it all along. It would have been impossible not to take old Charlie. Wonder what the boys’ll say?”

At last it seemed that something of sufficient importance had occurred to tear her mind from her all-absorbing occupation. She got up, her cheeks still flushed, and moved to the door with a sort of look on her face that implied that for the present she was performing the extremely difficult feat of walking on air.

[249]But I was too quick for her. With a bound I got to the door, and had my back snugly against it by the time she arrived.

“Now then, Dimmy, get out of the way,” she imperiously said. “Can’t wait a moment, you know. Must tell the boys. They’ll just go mad.”

“Oh, you can’t,” said I immovably. “Really. How nice! And you must tell the boys?”

“No more ragging, Dimmy,” said she. “Honour bright, I can’t hold myself till I’ve told ’em. What are you standing there like that for? I want to pass.”

“Oh, you do,” said I. “How interesting! Awf’ly glad you’ve told me. Jolly glad to know, you know.”

“Dimmy, if you don’t drop your jolly jaw, and let me pass, I’ll be downright angry. Do you hear, Dimmy. Don’t play the Angora.”

“Well, it’s like this,” said I. “For the last hour you have been spending your time in deliberately disregarding every word I’ve said. But now, my dear Grace, pointedly speaking, you’ve bally well got to listen, and the sooner you make your mind up to it, the sooner you’ll get it over.”

At this Miss Grace began to flare up like anything.

“The music’ll play in a minute,” she said. “Tell you straight, Dimmy, I’m a terror when I[250] get my turkey up. If I do get my wool off, the feathers’ll fly.”

“Nineteen from forty-one, quick!” said I. “But, my dear Grace, you sit down and listen. That’s my tip. It’s the only way you’ll get out just yet, anyhow.”

“Don’t say I haven’t given you fair warning, Dimmy, will you?” she cried, with her face in a blaze.

“All right,” said I cheerily; “just give me time, Grace, and I’ll laugh, I’m positive I’ll laugh.”

Grace stamped her foot. She looked things.

“Very nice, indeed,” said I. “I’m certain I’ll laugh.”

“Oh, it is too bad!” she wailed. “Dimmy, you are a brute! I must go and tell ’em. I must really. Dimmy, do come away from that door, there’s a good soul!”

“No,” said I callously; “not until you have considered and replied to my proposal.”

“Proposal!” cried Grace, midway between amazement and rage. “What proposal?”

“That comes of not listening,” said I. “Think what you’ve missed. Am I to understand that you didn’t hear a word I said?”

“That’s about it,” said Grace.

“Then, my dear Grace,” said I; “you take a chair and listen. If I keep you here till two, I’m[251] going over it again, and I’m going to make you listen.”

“Oh, are you?” Had Grace been any one but Grace, I should have said she positively snorted. “Oh, are you, Dimmy? Don’t you be too jolly sure about it.”

I grieve to state that my ultimatum in Grace’s opinion constituted a casus belli. The flying squadron immediately received orders to sail, the blood darted all over her face in the most pictorial manner, and she picked one of the books of the Rector’s off the table. She began to skirmish a bit, making several feints, and awaiting her opportunity.

“I don’t want to, Dimmy, you know,” said she.

“But by Jingo if you do, Grace,” said I.

“You’d better come out of it, Dimmy, you know,” said this armed belligerent, trying to show that our relations were not yet so strained but that a conciliatory tone might preserve the peace, even at this late hour. “It’s not a bit funny, you know. It wasn’t exactly what one ’ud call a good joke at the start, and now it’s getting as stale as anything.”

“If it is a joke,” I quoted, “it’s not at all obvious. When I want to be bored I read Punch.”

Crash came Pearson on the Creed full at my head. I dodged, of course, but the momentum[252] of that weighty theological work as it hurtled against the resisting oak panel of the library door was really ominous. The noise appeared to shake the foundations of the house.

“I’m glad,” said I, “that my nerves are fitted with rubber tyres and ball bearings.”

It was some relief to see that the countenance of the enemy had now changed to one of rue. Pearson on the Creed, lay sans covers and practically disembowelled at my feet. Poor Grace flopped on her knees and began to gather the mutilated members of this old but highly respectable tome.

“Dimmy, you’re a brute! a beast! that’s what you are!” she cried. “Do you see what you’ve done? Oh, father will be angry! Oh, he will talk! He will be eloquent! He’ll be ever such a lot worse than he is on Sundays.”

His daughter, still on her knees, looked the picture of despair.

“Will he be cursive?” I amiably inquired.

“No,” said the miserable Grace, vainly trying to readjust the fragments. “He don’t take on like that. Wish he did; then it wouldn’t be so rough. When he has you on the carpet, he chucks a lot of high dictionary language at you, like he does in his sermons—awful big words, you know; what you can’t understand, you know. And they must mean[253] a dreadful lot more than those you can, mustn’t they? Oh, he’s just horribly, awfully polite. Last time he told me ‘to restrain my primeval instincts.’ That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? Does he mean don’t play the goat, or what? Shouldn’t mind if I only knew what he meant.”

“He means don’t play the Angora,” said the luminous I, with an air of knowledge.

“Oh, that’s it, is it,” said Grace; “then why don’t he jolly well say so, then, instead of rolling up ‘primeval instincts’ to you and that kind o’ lingo?”

Grace having by this tenderly gathered Pearson on the Creed, and having cunningly contrived to restore him to some semblance of his former unimpeachable respectability, rose from her knees, and returned to the attack.

“Dimmy, do come from that door, there’s a nice old chap,” she said. “I’ll be so good. I’m sure I’ll listen to you when I’ve told the boys. I’m simply dying to tell ’em. Dimmy, you brute! come from that door at once!”

“Sit down,” said I, stretching my finger out in my laconic sternness.

“If you don’t,” said she, “I’ll get Hengstenberg’s Dissertations on the Genuineness and Authenticity of the Pentateuch to you. That’ll make you howl if it hits you, I’ll give you my word.[254] And it don’t matter if we do knock the stuffing out o’ that, ’cause it isn’t orthodox, you know.”

“Why, a girl couldn’t even lift a name like that?” said I, to encourage her.

“Oh, you don’t draw me,” said the experienced Grace. She had served an apprenticeship with four brothers. However, I was glad to find that the unhappy and distraught Grace had by this arrived at the conclusion that there was only one course open to her, if she was to be enabled to convey the burning news to the dining-room in a reasonable time. That one course was complete submission. Accordingly, after a terrible struggle, in which the native Eve, or perhaps the primeval instincts, within her were persuaded to lie down, she retired a few paces, leant against the table, sighed heart-rendingly, and then laid her mutinously twitching hands down by her sides as placidly as possible.

“Fire away,” she said dismally; “I’ll listen.”

“Thanks awf’ly,” said I; “so good of you to listen.”

“Oh, but, Dimmy, you great beast!” she implored, “please do look nippy; I’m simply dying.”

“Well, what I’ve got to say’s just this,” said I, and the courage I found wherewith to utter it came partly, I suppose, from the excitement of my late employments, and partly from the get-there-sometime[255] Anglo-Saxon spirit that makes us all feel such wonderful fine fellows. “Grace, I want you to be my wife,” said I.

“Oh, if that’s all your nodding, and winking, and reddening, and stuttering’s been about,” said Grace, with evident relief, “I’ll be your anything, so long as you’ll let me go immediately.”

“You misunderstand me rather,” said I, nearing desperation. “’Pon my honour as a gentleman, I want you to be my wife.”

“But the boys wouldn’t let me,” she said.

“The boys!” I cried. “What the devil—no, I mean what the dickens have the boys got to do with it? Who are the boys, pray? Never heard of such a thing in my life.”

“Well, you see, Dimmy, it’s like this, you see,” said Grace confidentially, but with her eye for ever wandering to the door. “Nothing under a county man’s their motto.”

“You mean it’s yours,” said I indignantly.

“Oh, I daresay,” said she. “If I’ve got to have somebody, I’ll have a county man or nobody.”

“You’d have the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour, M.P.,” said I, to illustrate how monstrously untenable was the position she had taken up. “There’s never a girl that wouldn’t, if I know anything.”

“Balfour, Balfour,” said Grace. “Balfour. Oh,[256] yes, you mean the golf Johnny. Golf! What next? Look here, Dimmy, do you take me for a muff? Why, I wouldn’t marry Willie Park.”

“No,” said I; “because you’re going to marry me.”

“Nothing under a county cricketer,” said she, with an air of finality. “Besides, the boys ’ud be just awful. Now then, Dimmy, out o’ the way. I’ve heard you out all fair and square, haven’t I?”

“Not by a lot,” said I. “My dear Grace, if you don’t be reasonable, I shall have to declaim. Don’t want to, I can assure you, but as a last resort I shall certainly be obliged to lift up my voice.”

“Angels and ministers of grace!” cried the unhappy young person of that name; “I’ve let you down ever so gently, and this is what I get for it. You’re ungrateful, Dimmy, that’s what you are! Now then, let me pass.”

“I’m not a county cricketer,” I began.

“It’s no secret,” said Grace.

“But I mean to be,” said I. “May get a trial for the county this year. And didn’t you say yourself that my crack to cover was all serene?”

These particular reminiscences of my batting promised to modify Grace’s point of view.

“I’d clean forgotten your crack to cover,” said[257] she, with a fallen look. “Hope I’ve not said anything very rude, Dimmy. If I have, I’m awf’ly humble.”

“You’ve been pretty thick,” said I, following up what looked like an advantage. “And you said my forward stroke was not so dusty, didn’t you?”

“Very decent, indeed,” said the keen critic. “Honour bright, Dimmy, I wasn’t really very rude, was I?”

“Depends what you call rude,” said I. “You see, there’s no standard measure of rudeness in this country. You threw books and things at me, but that’s a detail.”

“So I did,” she said sadly. “But I’d clean forgot your crack to cover. Makes me feel rather sick, Dimmy, when I think what I may have said. You ought to have reminded me. One can’t think of everything; ’specially as you’re quite an ordinary looking sort o’ chap.”

“There you go again,” said I.

“That’s not what I meant exactly,” said this frank young person. “What I mean is, you’re not six four, and chest according. But, Dimmy, are you going to let me pass?”

“Not till I’ve had something definite,” said I.

“You’ve got it,” said she.

“Oh, dear no,” said I. “You say nothing under[258] a county cricketer. Well, as I’m certain to be a county cricketer, your reply’s inadequate.”

“I like the certain,” said Grace. “I should go ‘Abundance’ on the certain.”

“The certain’s assumed for the sake of argument,” said I.

“Dimmy, will you let me pass—please!”

“Will you give me some hope?” said I.

“Let me pass first,” said Grace, “then we’ll talk about it.”

“You don’t come over me like that,” said I. “Must have something definite. If I made myself into a county man, would you give me a show?”

“Oh, anything, anything,” said Grace, “so long as you’ll let me pass!”

“Of course, I’ve not much to offer you, you know,” said I, reduced to the coarse expedient. “Only that crack to cover, you know, and a pretty decent forward stroke. And, Grace, I’m developing ever such a prime late cut, and I’ve great hopes of my leg glance. When I get my eye in and the pace o’ the ground, I can turn length balls off my leg and middle.”

It gladdened me to think that she was softening visibly.

“I should like to see all these fine things for myself,” said she. “Must confess I haven’t seen[259] ’em yet. I’ll come and watch you play these strokes against a bit of class bowling.”

All at once an idea hit me in the middle of the waistcoat.

“Grace,” said I breathlessly, palpitatingly, “s’pose you play me to-morrow under Rectory rules on the lawn at single wicket. Then you can test my cricket yourself, don’t you know. What awful good fun! Isn’t that a big idea?”

“Dimmy, if you don’t let me go, I’m certain that I shall be obliged to be rude,” said Grace, still reining herself in nobly.

“You’d see me at work against a bit o’ class bowling, you know,” said I.

“S’pose I should,” she said, pondering.

“And we might arrange it like this,” said I, “just to lend a little interest to the thing. If you beat me at single wicket on the Rectory lawn to-morrow, I’m plucked, wiped out, clean done. On the other hand, if I beat you, you undertake to give my claims very serious consideration.”

“Oh, anything, anything,” said Grace, “if you’ll just let me go. Dimmy, I’m certain that if I didn’t know otherwise, I should think you were a Harrow boy, your behaviour’s that abominably crude. Oh, I am in a wax!”

“Look here, Grace,” said I, “I merely require[260] your promise that you’ll play me to-morrow on these conditions, and then you are at liberty to go.”

“You’ve got my promise,” said she, with an off-hand haste that was by no means reassuring.

Thereupon I opened the door for the hot, angry, and impatient Grace, and she slipped past me in a flash, fearing no doubt that I should repent, and close the door once more upon her.

“Dimmy,” said she, as we repaired together to the boys, “I shall give you a most awful licking to-morrow, you know. By Jove, Dimmy, I wouldn’t be in your shoes! I will give you beans; I will take it out of you for this.”

“Per-haps,” said I saucily. “But, Grace, I shall go all the time, I can promise you. I mayn’t be a county man, but I’m not in the habit of letting girls walk over me with impunity.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said Grace cuttingly. “I should judge that girls are just about your weight. If you played your best, you might play very well indeed against girls. But there’s one thing, Dimmy, that I happen to know of your cricket. You can’t bowl for nuts. And I can let daylight into downright rubbish. Why, Toddles is actually better than you at bowling, and I hit him most horribly. Toddles funks me now. Oh, I shall enjoy myself to-morrow. I’ll pay you out for[261] to-night’s disgusting behaviour. If I can’t knock the cover off your stuff, Dimmy, I’ll never touch a bat again, so there!”

Alas! that my miserable bowling should deserve every word she said about it. My heart sank.

I  REGRET to state that when Grace and I came to “the boys” in the dining-room, we discovered seven gentlemen seated round the dining-room table, engaged in a game called baccarat. It was reassuring to find, however, that they were playing for nominal stakes, and that it was being conducted under evident difficulties.

“Didn’t father say he positively wouldn’t have it!” cried Miss Grace. “Oh, there will be a row if he catches you at it. Do drop it, there’s good men.”

“He’ll put up with anything to-night,” said Toddles brazenly, “now that Tom’s got a trial with the county.”

“I’ll tell you a piece of prime news, if you’ll just drop it, boys,” said Grace coaxingly. But the amount of restraint she practised to hold back the prime news in question must have been[263] wonderful. I suppose it is that women have such remarkable powers of diplomacy.

“Has that demoralising little Ranjy got another two hundred?” cried Number Three in the batting averages apprehensively. “Because if he has, I shall just chuck up the sponge; I can’t hope to catch him.”

“Better than that, Archie,” said his sister darkly, “ever so much better than that. Can’t you guess?”

Grace, on her own part, however, spared him the trouble. She was no longer able to suppress her eagerness. Impulsively straightening the telegram that was crushed in her hands she read out its contents at the top of a victorious voice.

Baccarat was forgotten. Led by Grace herself, the company gave three rousing cheers for Stoddart, then another three for Charlie. Then, on the suggestion of the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, another three for the bearer of the news, which was, of course, Miss Grace. Then, on the suggestion of Miss Grace, there were three for the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, though why nobody knew exactly; and in the end everybody was cheering everybody else, and generally kicking up the most horrible noise it was possible to make. The redoubtable Toddles, who scaled a little over nine stones himself, was endeavouring to carry fourteen[264] stones ten pounds, in the person of Charlie, round the room by his own force of character, when the Rector appeared from his study with a look not all pleasure upon his face.

“If you would like the hose,” said he, “I think you’ll find it in the garden.” His daughter cut his observations short, however, by brandishing the telegram before him. Directly he read it, the change in his tone and manner was almost ludicrous.

“Dear me!” he said. “How very good of Stoddart. I’m very pleased, I’m sure. I congratulate you heartily, my boy, very heartily. Laura, will you please have the goodness to ring for Jennings. We must celebrate this auspicious occasion in the time-honoured way I think.”

“Hear, hear!” said the full assembly.

“Only time on record, Father, you know,” said Grace, who was trying desperately hard to keep her enthusiasm under restraint, “that Stoddy’s ever taken two of one family together. And who’ll say dreams are rot now?” she demanded fiercely. “What price mine? Hasn’t it come true?”

“There’s no ‘name inadvertently omitted’ about it, though,” said the literal Charlie.

“All the same,” said Archie, “it’s near enough to give Grace no end of a reputation with the Society of Psychical Research.”

[265]“The Society of Sikey—what?” said Grace. “Mustn’t it hurt you, Archie, to be so clever?”

The apparition of the butler, however, restored the tone to the proceedings.

“I think, Jennings,” said the Rector, “that there should be just two bottles of that champagne left in the third bin. Will you please bring it up.”

“Miss Laura had it yesterday, sir,” said Jennings.

“Miss Laura had it yesterday, sir,” said the Rector, with the majesty of an archbishop. “But pray, sir, will you have the goodness to explain what Miss Laura has to do with it?”

“Miss Laura came to me yesterday, sir,” said Jennings apprehensively, “and told me to give her the two remaining bottles. She said that she would take all the responsibility, sir.”

“Quite right, Jennings,” said Grace, with a courageous promptitude that I am afraid commanded the admiration of us all. “I did say I would take all the responsibility. You see it’s like this, Father. I couldn’t give a lot of common grocery to a set of county men, two of ’em going out with Stoddy, could I?”

“There was only one of ’em going out with Stoddy yesterday, though,” said her enemy of Harrow.

“I’ll defy anybody to say that there’s not two now, though,” said Grace. “And it was the Little[266] Clumpton match, you know, Father; and it was an awful hot day, an’ awful fagging, and I knew you wouldn’t mind. Besides, I couldn’t have given anything common to two men going out with Stoddy, could I?”

“Well,” said her magnanimous parent, “on due consideration, I’m inclined to think you couldn’t.”

“That’s all right then,” said Grace cheerfully.

To describe in detail the festivities attendant on Charlie’s honours is by no means necessary, and perhaps not altogether politic. All I need say is, that it was such a shameful hour when the Optimist and I remembered it was time to go home that everybody simply scouted the idea.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said our hostess. “You’re going to stay the night. Must have you in condition for to-morrow’s match, you know, Dimmy. Don’t want you to say when I’ve given you a most frightful licking that you weren’t fit.”

“What match?” cried several of the curious.

“Dimmy knows,” said Grace.

“Oh, Dimmy knows, does he,” said Archie. “By Jove! you men, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Jimmy’s lost his pony.”

“What pony?” said Grace.

“Dimmy knows,” said Archie.

And to me, who had by far the most exact acquaintance with the case, it was as good as a[267] comedy to witness their curiosity regarding the whole affair.

“Laura,” said the Rector, who had been so borne onwards by the general exultation of men and things that he was breaking all his records in the way of sitting up, “Laura, is it not time you went to bed? It is after ten, I think, and that’s your usual hour.”

“Well, look here, Father,” said his daughter; “will you promise to see ’em all to bed? Please don’t leave ’em up with that awful little Toddles. Archie, Charlie, and Tom are playing against Kent on Monday, and I can see his game. You will keep your eye on ’em, won’t you, Father? Oh, and just watch James’s game as well. He’s all right in himself, you know, but when he gets with Toddles, he’s likely to be led away.”

“I never heard such aspersions in the whole course of my career,” said Toddles, taking forth a white silk handkerchief, and religiously applying it to his sorrow. “Grace, I’m overcome.”

“Don’t believe it,” said Miss Grace. “Toddles, you’re a wrong ’un, and always were.”

“Dear me,” said the Rector, “Laura, where do you find such expressions?”

“Now remember, Father,” said Miss Grace, opening the door. “Oh, and you two have got to stay. The best room in the house, too. It’s[268] the one King Charles II. slept in after the battle of Worcester.”

“My dear girl,” said the Rector, who was evidently deeply exercised on this point, “have I not said over and over again that he did not sleep there. He could not possibly have done so.”

“Well, all I can say is,” said Miss Grace, “that, if that’s a fact, this is the only house in these parts in which King Charles II. didn’t sleep after the battle of Worcester. And that being so, I don’t see why we haven’t as much right to him as anybody else. But keep your eye on Toddles, won’t you, Father. Breakfast at half-past ten, boys. That’s when you like it, I know. Be good. Ta-ta.”

Amid a volley of “good-nights” and “ta-tas” this extremely popular young person went to bed. Loth as I am to say it, even her father did not see fit to follow her example straight away. Events had fired him. He drank the health of Charlie, and he smoked the health of Charlie as sedulously as any. In fact, no man contributed more to the general undermining of Charlie’s health than he. He told his old-time stories of the cricket field. He also told some stories that were not of the cricket field, but were not the less relished on that account. He related how on one occasion on which he was bowling he killed a swallow as it flew across the pitch. And like the thorough cricketer he was he[269] said that fact reminded him that he took nine wickets for sixteen in that particular match.

Not wishing to incriminate any one, especially as two of the company were Clerks in Holy Orders, I do not intend to make any more definite statement in regard to the hour at which we did retire, than to say that it was after ten. But then no household in England could have had quite such provocation. Two members of one family going out with Stoddart to represent the Old Country in the autumn! It was enough to make an anchorite forego his way of life.

The summer dawn was on the trees and peeping through the blinds when at last the Optimist and I appeared in the chamber of King Charles. The birds in their dew-steeped branches were twittering to the meadows and the cows. A cool, early fragrance came through the open windows and filled the room. Therefore, when the Optimist and I climbed into our several beds of white, sweet-smelling linen, and the young sun threw a stray beam or two upon our pillows, the luxury of lying awake was so much greater than that of going to sleep, that after spending ten ineffectual minutes in trying to do so, I gave it up as hopeless.

“Brightside,” said I, at the end of that period, “are you asleep yet?”

“Not much, and shan’t be,” said he.

[270]“I wonder why we are like this?” said I. “Seems funny, don’t it. Don’t feel a bit tired, do you?”

“No,” said he, “only in the throat. Pollies and Scotches always make it feel a bit weary. But don’t those Trenthams touch ’em pretty. Awf’ly nice chaps though, aren’t they? Extends to their feminine faction too. I wonder why we can’t go to sleep? Does seem funny, as you say.”

“Don’t it,” said I. “Have you any ’bacca? mine’s all cleared.”

The Optimist reached for his coat and presently dropped his pouch on to my eye. Thereon I sat up in bed and lit a pipe.

“By the way,” said I, “I want to ask you what colour you’d call Grace’s complexion?”

“Haven’t noticed it particularly,” said he, suppressing a yawn.

“Brightside,” said I severely, “don’t lie. And don’t yawn, because when you yawn you still lie.”

“Girls are a topic that bores one, you know,” said he. “But I s’pose you did pop it. She seemed rather familiar. She called you Dimmy.”

“You noticed that?” said I.

“Everybody noticed it,” said he. “And did you pop it?”

“Like a brick,” said I.

“Then you’d better tell me all about it,” said he,[271] exposing his hand at last. “Then perhaps we shall both feel sleepier.”

Thereupon, without the exercise of the least piece of pressure, I entered on a flowing, exhaustive and frank relation.

AT the end of this exciting story, the Optimist said:

“Quite a neat idea, this trial by cricket, from one point of view. The point of view is hers. It’s an attempt of course on the part of feminine delicacy to let a fellow down gently. You haven’t a thousand-to-one chance of beating her, you know.”

“Thanks, old chap,” said I, “you’re a great consolation. But I’m going to have such a good try. Besides, although she’s a Trentham, she’s also a girl.”

“Can you bowl?” said the Optimist, with brutal brevity.

“Oh, damn!” said I, and proceeded to smoke savagely for the space of three minutes, as my manner was in some danger of losing its repose.

“Your bowling’s positively putrid,” the Optimist[273] said. “And she can hit hard. Lots of the family muscle, and her eye’s perfect.”

“I’m trusting to my batting,” said I.

“You’ll find it a broken reed,” said he, “when you come to play her curly ones. You haven’t met ’em yet, have you?”

“No, worse luck,” said I.

“She’s got her guv’nor’s curl, you know. Horrible things that swerve in the air and then break back again. You heard what the boys said? And they’ve not exaggerated ’em a bit. They’re indescribably infernal.”

I tried to play the stoic. With this purpose in view, I discarded my pipe and settled myself for peace, perfect peace. But I was just as likely to send down a good length ball as to get to sleep just then.

“It’s no good malingering,” said the Optimist, at the end of ten minutes; “you are no more in slumber’s lap than I am.”

“Shut up, can’t you?” I said. “I was just in a doze.”

“Why don’t you face your position,” said he, “as becomes a valiant man of Little Clumpton? You’ve got to play Grace in an hour or two, and yet the bowling at your command is incapable of getting a girls’ school out. As I am truly anxious that you shall bring no disgrace upon your club,[274] might I suggest that you get a little practice before the match begins?”

“Almost a suggestion for you,” said I. “Are you willing to assist me?”

“Oh, I’ll see you through with it,” said the Optimist, who, I have reason to believe, was the most unselfish person in the world. Let this explain, then, how it came about that at a little before eight, the pair of us dressed, and presently sallied below to obtain a ball wherewith I might develop the theory and practice of bowling. It was not, of course, to be expected that our companions in the late pious orgies would be yet abroad; indeed, we felt ourselves to be quite early. It was not at all a difficult affair to procure the article of which we were in need, as the first domestic to whom we broached the subject directed us to a receptacle where bats, balls, stumps, pads, gloves and “blanco” were heaped together in profuse disorder. On sallying out to the lawn, however, the very first object our eyes fell on gave us no inconsiderable shock.

Miss Grace was assisting Biffin to prepare the wicket with a small but apparently heavy hand-roller. Involuntarily the pair of us, guilty as we felt ourselves to be, made a motion to withdraw. Alas! too late! we had been observed.

“Mornin’, Cheery; mornin’, Dimmy,” cried Miss[275] Grace, in a voice as strong as a blackbird’s. “Come and roll a bit. We’ve been at it an hour or more.”

There was no alternative but somewhat reluctantly to approach.

“Why, what an early bird you are!” I began. “I thought you said breakfast was at half-past ten.”

“For you idle men,” said she. “I’ve had one already, and shall be ready for another by then. ’Must lend Biffin a hand; he’d never have these wickets O.K. else.”

“What time does the match begin?” I asked, to keep up the conversation, whilst I tried to smuggle unseen the tell-tale ball into my coat.

“Wicket pitched at twelve o’clock,” said Grace. “And it’s all right, Dimmy, I saw you. You can fetch it out again. You want to do a bit of bowling, don’t you? Want to find a bit of a length? Well, if you’ll just roll a few up I’ll give you some tips.”

Impatient Reader, I ask you to conceive the situation! Conceive the irony, the pathos! Here was the very person I was trying to overcome in deadly combat, having the audacity to show me how to set about it. A person of a more sanguine temperament, the Optimist for instance, might have argued from these premises that the enemy[276] was actually courting defeat. But I knew by the half-pitying, half-contemptuous way in which the offer was made, that it sprang from her own joyous self-confidence, and that she was inclined to regard me as a foe who not for a single moment was to be considered seriously.

Grace’s keen eye and her deductive faculty made me decidedly uncomfortable. It is not nice to be found out and then be so ruthlessly exposed. And I regret to say that the Optimist, who had nothing at stake, was sufficiently human to enjoy my misfortune.

“Who told you what Dimsdale was up to?” he said. I believe that it is no injustice to the Optimist to state that he was trying to prolong my pain.

“Was it very clever of me?” said Grace. “Do you know it makes me laugh awfully to see the way you men try to dodge and hedge and that sort o’ thing. You’re that horribly clumsy. There was old Dimmy’s face saying as plain as print, ‘Don’t look, please, till I’ve put it away, will you?’ But let’s have that ball, old chap, and I’ll see if I can’t lick you into shape a bit. I do mean to do the right thing by you, you know.”

Pitching a single stump on yesterday’s wicket, she got behind it, and caused me to begin bowling from the opposite crease. The first ball I tried to deliver almost wrenched my unaccustomed[277] right arm from its socket. It pitched about halfway down and trickled along the ground till it ultimately rolled a good yard wide of the mark. My tutor raised her brows with a mild air of protest.

“My dear man,” she said, “is that what you call bowling? It strikes me that it’s more like bowls than anything.”

“I’m only loosening my arm, you know,” said I weakly.

“Keep pegging away,” said she, valiantly suppressing a smile.

Fancy the other side adopting this kind of tone. And the Optimist was enjoying it.

“Cheery,” said Grace, “go and lend a hand to Biffin. There is he tugging away like a horse, and you stand grinning at him.”

“It was not at Biffin, I can assure you,” the Optimist said.

“I must have been mistaken then,” said the adroit Grace; “it was only your way of looking interested.”

“Oh, no, it was not,” said the Optimist, “I was laughing at——”

“Don’t interrupt, please,” said my tutor, “and don’t argue.”

Really my tutor was the very essence of good breeding! I continued to bowl without enjoyment,[278] without inspiration, without conviction even. For I was distressingly alive to the fact that my bowling was exactly what bowling ought not to be. To adopt the technical language of my tutor: “It’s a good length, Dimmy, at your own end. Be careful, old chap, or you’ll trap your toes.”

It had neither length, nor pace, nor direction. It had absolutely nothing to recommend it. There was a timidity, a meekness, an air of apology about it that positively invited batsmen to hit it very hard indeed.

“You really must get your arm a bit higher,” said my tutor. “Bring it right over, you know. And get your fingers round the seam—so; only two besides the thumb. Tuck t’others underneath a bit, and give ’em a sort of jerk, and flick your wrist a bit just as you deliver.”

“Ye-es,” said I; “ye-es, ye-es.”

“Got the idea?” said Grace.

“Perfectly,” said I.

“Let’s see you do it then.”

Alas! I did do it, and the ball went spinning out of my hand at right angles, and hit Biffin very tenderly on the head.

“That’s how you get ‘devil,’ you know,” said my tutor, with a very kindergarten kind of air, and pretending at the same time to be quite unconscious of this melancholy incident.

[279]“It’s the devil,” I said simply.

“I must show you how to do it,” said my tutor.

“Do, please, by all means,” said I quickly.

I was, of course, as a batsman and an opponent, particularly anxious to obtain a private view of her celebrated bowling. And the specimen she did send down, said as clearly as possible that report had not overpraised her prowess. There was a mastery, an ease, and a combination of qualities therein that said here was a born bowler. Hers, as has been remarked, was an Alfred Shaw style of action, only that in accordance with the modern theory she brought her arm as high over as she could possibly get it. She was decidedly slow, but possessed the necessary and fatal “nip,” and to see the ball curl one way from her hand, and then the moment it dropped quickly twist in the opposite direction was, to a batsman who had got to face it presently, little short of alarming.

“Why,” I cried, “why, Grace, your bowling’s perfectly magnificent!”

“Oh no, Dimmy, it’s not,” said Grace. “It’s quite common or garden. If I’d got a bit more pace now it might do things. But with more pace I can’t get the break, and that’s what makes me so sick. The Guv’nor could, you know. He was a bowler if you like. I’ve bowled at Biffin for[280] hours an’ hours, yet if I begin to try medium the ‘work’ don’t act.”

My tutor uttered this in a tragic tone.

“I don’t care what your pace is,” said I, carried away by her beautiful delivery, her perfect length, her “nip,” her “devil,” her break, and, above all, her parent’s curl in the air, which was an undoubted case of heredity, “but your bowling’s magnificent.”

“Oh, rot!” said Grace. “It ought to be faster.”

“It’s perfectly magnificent,” said I.

“Oh, rot!” said Grace again. “Do you think I don’t know when bowling’s real A 1? Too slow for a quick-footed bat. He’s got time to get out and hit me most horrid. Didn’t you see Archie lift me clean over that jolly old tent. Wasn’t it a smasher? I did feel prickly. I’d kept ’em so short, and as soon as I did pitch one up a bit that’s how he served me.”

“By Jove!” said I; “that’s what I’ll do. It’s not quite my game, you know, but I’m hanged if I don’t go out and hit you.”

“Oh, you will,” said the enemy, with a gleam in her eye. “We’ll see about that. Rectory rules, you know, and lots of fielders.”

Judged in this light, my new scheme was not quite so good as it at first appeared.

“We are a pair of jays, aren’t we,” said Grace,[281] with amazing friendliness. “Here we’ve both gone and given ourselves away. You’ve shown me all about your stuff, and I’ve shown you all about mine.”

“Yes,” I said, “we’ve certainly exposed our hands. Rather a joke. But I never thought about it at all.”

“Nor I,” said she. “But this I will say, Dimmy. Now that I’ve seen the sort o’ tosh you do bowl, I’m certain that I shall have just a walk over. I always guessed it was pretty bad, your bowling, but I didn’t think it could be quite the giddy essence of utterness that it really is. If you’ll take my tip you’ll try lobs. I might get into two minds with those, you know, as nobody’s quite happy with lobs. Your other sort, though, won’t have me out in a season. I should advise you to scratch. You’ll have an awful time if you don’t. I’m speaking plain as a friend, old chap.”

“So beastly good of you to be so beastly friendly,” said I gloomily.

The downright Grace certainly meant to behave nicely. Her advice was perfectly well-meant and sincere; but how impossible it was to take it! I would prefer to sacrifice my personal dignity rather than my opportunity. Besides, her complete indifference to the result of our encounter was a great humiliation in itself. Could she have by[282] any chance forgotten the stakes for which I was to play? I deemed it wise to sound her.

“Well, I will scratch on one condition,” said I.

“My dear Dimmy,” said she, “I’m not asking a favour, you know. Entirely in your own interests, I can assure you. You are at liberty to play the match or scratch it as you just please. Matter of perfect indifference to me, you know. Merely suggested scratching to spare you a tremendous licking. Don’t matter to me personally one way or the other, a little bit.”

“Oh, it don’t,” said I, feeling both hot and emotional; and had a traction-engine been taking the liberty of going over me, I don’t think I could have felt more crushed.

“Why should it?” said Grace, gazing at me with big-eyed demureness.

“My dear Grace,” said I; “my dear Grace.”

Her eyes grew bigger.

“What’s up, old chap?” said she.

“You’re not forgetting,” I said anxiously; “you’re not forgetting, I hope, what this match means to me. You promised to give my claims the most serious consideration if I won, didn’t you?”

Grace’s reply was laughter. I sought to compensate my injuries a little by persuading myself that this ebullience on the part of Grace was in the worst possible taste. But this I knew to be a chimera,[283] raised from the ruins of my self-esteem; for Grace was that forthright, fearless kind of soul who had only to do a thing to create the precedent for it. Somehow she seemed quite unable to lose her breeding for a moment, as, by some strange oversight, the science of snobbery had been omitted from her education altogether. Therefore she did not spend her time in committing the very solecisms that she strove most to avoid. Could she have been bred in England?

This trite reflection, Impatient Reader, is not really a digression, but is a device introduced to allow Grace full time to have her laugh out. When it was ended at last, I said mildly:—

“What’s the joke, Grace?”

“Why, the joke is that you’ve not got the slightest earthly, my dear chap,” said Grace. “Else do you think I’d have taken those absurd conditions?”

This was comforting in the extreme! It was no more than I deserved though. But my imperial Anglo-Saxon rose in all the majesty of his Rudyard Kipling.

“All right,” said I; “but this is going to be no walk over. I’m going all the way, I can tell you, Grace. A game’s never won till it’s lost.”

“I’m glad you’re cheerful,” said Grace, “’cause your gruelling’ll be so prime that you’ll want a[284] dreadful lot of cheerfulness. It just makes me shudder to think what’ll happen to you, Dimmy.”

“You can’t intimidate me,” said I; “you can’t make me funk you.”

“That’ll come later,” said Grace, “when you go on to bowl!”

“Cricket, cricket, and still cricket!”

It was the voice of the Rector, who had come upon us unobserved.

“Mornin’, Father,” said his daughter. “All serene this morning? You were reading Livy rather late last night, weren’t you? Oh, you literary men, your hours are dreadful!”

“If you are too ironical,” said the Rector, accepting the cheek she so promptly offered him—yes, I mean in both a figurative and a literal sense. I certainly intended no pun, but if one has to deal with the confounded English language, how is one to avoid its pitfalls?—“If you are too ironical,” said the Rector, “I’ll preach a fifty minutes’ sermon to-morrow, Laura.”

As was subsequently explained, this was quite the most effective means of dealing with the misdemeanours of Miss Grace.

CONTRARY to expectation, breakfast was dispatched in sufficiently reasonable time to permit my match with Grace to start about eleven. Needless to say, Grace herself arranged the details. The seven cricketers who were not playing on this occasion, instead of being allowed to act the part of mere lookers-on, received orders to field for both sides. “And, Toddles,” said Grace, in an intimidating tone, “if you drop Dimmy and then take me, I’ll never forgive you.” Her father, to my great uneasiness, was to be installed as scorer, under his usual convenient willow tree; and the notorious Biffin she proposed to nominate as umpire. Acting on the joint advice of Toddles and Archie, I entered a formal protest against Biffin being allowed to stand in this important fixture. This matter, which involved much more than I had suspected, was debated at the breakfast-table.

“Oh,” said Grace, “you’ve nothing against Biffin’s personal character, I hope?”

[286]“Oh, no,” said I; “it’s only that he don’t quite command my confidence, you know.”

“How funny!” said Grace; “’cause I have every confidence in Biffin. He knows the game, his eyesight’s good, his decisions are as prompt as possible, and his judgment’s wonderful. Can’t expect more of an umpire, can you? Of course, he might be better looking, but that’s his misfortune, poor man! Besides, I never think it’s wise to have an umpire who’s too good-looking. One’s liable to watch him, instead of the ball, don’t you see.”

“Dimsdale, don’t you be bluffed,” said Charlie. “She’s a regular Arthur Roberts at the game of bluff. She knows as well as anybody that Biffin’s umpiring is worth about five hundred runs a year to her. The darned impudent decisions I’ve seen that bounder Biffin give are something cruel. If he’s given her in once, he’s given her in six times when she’s been stumped yards out of her ground, simply on account of the tip of the wicket-keeper’s nose being in front of the wicket. Pretty barefaced to come it once, but six times is what I should call immoral.”

“Shows his knowledge o’ the game,” said Biffin’s defender, “and his attention to the fine points of it, too. There’s lots of umpires ’ud not have noticed that, and I should have had to have gone out.”

[287]“They’d not, that’s a cert.,” said Charlie; “and that you would have had to have gone out is a dead cert.”

“I s’pose, Charlie,” said Grace, “that the tip o’ the wicket-keeper’s nose is a part of his person, isn’t it? And Rule 42 says——”

“Here, no more cucumbers!” cried T. S. M. hastily.

“Dimsdale, don’t you budge,” said Carteret. “If you consent to Biffin, you’ll be shamefully rooked.”

“What’s Dimmy got to do with it?” said Grace. “Is Dimmy the M.C.C., or what? If I say Biffin’s going to stand, Biffin will stand, and don’t you think he won’t; ’cause if you do, you’ll be in error.”

“Go it, Lord Harris!” said Toddles. “Just hear Harris! Oh, you autocratic person! Talk about George, why, you’re worse than a colonel of militia!”

The case was being conducted with great fervour by both sides. There was quite a formidable array of counsel for the prosecution. Indeed, Grace’s defence of the indefensible Biffin had for once caused her to stand absolutely alone. She was no whit abashed, though. Nor did she descend to mere argument. She was thoroughly satisfied with her own opinion, and was prepared to enforce[288] it in the teeth of male criticism of the most destructive kind.

“Biffin’s an unmitigated ruffian,” said Archie. “And if I can help it, he’ll never stand again.”

“But you can’t help it, Archie,” said his sister; “’cause if I want him to stand, he will stand, don’t you see?”

“He’s an unprincipled person,” said the little parson. “And I marvel that Grace’s moral nature can countenance him.”

“I’ll have a bob each way on ‘moral nature,’ Toddles,” said Grace.

“His umpirin’s too thick to talk about,” said T. S. M. “Why, at Harrow——”

“Yes, at Harrow,” said Grace. This prompt seizure of her opportunity was of no avail, however. Public opinion was now entirely with T. S. M. Poor Grace stood alone. She consoled herself with a massive piece of toast, with butter and marmalade to match.

“Seeing that Dimsdale’s happiness is at stake,” said Toddles, with an air of patronage and protection that was perfectly insufferable, “we shall do well to stick by him in this, and give him our undivided support. We’ll admit that he’s not much chance under the most favourable conditions; but with Biffin as umpire he’s as good as plucked before he goes on the field. Besides, we want this[289] to be a sporting event. Fair play all round, you know, and no favour, and may the best man win.”

“Toddles,” said the keen Grace, pausing an instant in her well-organized assault on the toast and marmalade, “you’re mixed. Sort yourself out a bit. Toddles, you’re talking rot.”

“Oh, but, my dear Grace,” said I, “it’s not rot for me, I can assure you. It’s a matter for earnest consideration.”

It was really enjoyable to feel such a weight of public opinion behind one. It was evidently a crisis that had been coming slowly to a head for years. Here was the opportunity of the long-suffering to test the legality of Grace’s uncompromising attitude on the Biffin question. In the somewhat technical language of the barrister, they were simply making a test case of it, in order to get a judicial pronouncement as to whether in future Grace was to be licensed to do as she liked.

“O’ course I shall, James,” said Grace; “I always do, don’t I?”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Archie, “I suggest that the question be submitted to arbitration. We’ll submit it to the Guv’nor, and take his verdict as final. Will you agree to that, Grace?”

“You know quite well, Archie,” said Grace, in a honeyed voice, “that I am always perfectly willing for you to fill up your spare time in a way that’s[290] profitable and amusing to yourself, providing it’s not likely to do you personally any harm, or to lead astray those who are younger than you are. Talk it over by all means with your father, Archie, but if I say Biffin will stand, you can take my word for it.”

The high-wrought state of public opinion, that was enough to make the French pause and the Sultan tremble, merely appeared to incite the dauntless Grace to new audacity. She positively snapped her fingers at it, and ate her toast and marmalade with an air of the most victorious unconcern.

“H’m,” said the little parson, in his best clerical tone; “she seems to be a person of character and ideas. What’s to be done? We can’t let Dimsdale be knocked down and walked over on an occasion of this sort. Grace, I certainly think that your uncompromising attitude on this vexed question is greatly to be deplored.”

“Deplore away,” said Grace, helping herself to butter. “What an amusing little man you are, Toddles!”

Affairs were at a deadlock. How was it possible to negotiate if one side would insist on having its own way?

“It’s a sort of diplomatic impasse,” said Archie. “What’s to be done? Suppose we take Biffin by main force and put him under the cucumber frame,[291] and keep him fastened down? There’d be no more bad decisions then.”

“Plenty of bad language, though,” said some person of wit.

“And we wouldn’t release him,” said Carteret, “until Grace had actually played an innings without damaging the eyesight of the cucumbers or otherwise mutilating them.”

“I call Grace’s behaviour beas’ly bad form,” said the Harrow captain.

“Oh, I know it’s beastly bad form,” said Grace; “but then, you see, Tommy, one has to play pretty low down to gain the appreciation of one’s family.”

Had Grace’s cause only been a just one, the manner in which she maintained it against all comers must have evoked unqualified admiration. The cabal was powerless in the face of her despotic attitude. They said hard things, and they said rude things, as brothers will, even if they have a sister who is a first-class angel of an unimpeachable appearance. But although Grace stood alone, discredited, out of favour, a fallen idol, and a mark for some very cutting observations, mostly the Harrow captain’s, who saw his moment, and, boylike, was exulting in it—despite all this, Grace continued to consume toast and marmalade as valiantly as ever. Now and then she diversified this proceeding by looking daggers at Toddles,[292] when that irrepressible little clergyman made faces at her. Now and then she introduced a brief remark on her own account, that on examination proved to be as flinty and hard-edged as a chip of granite. It was plain that the exercise of a considerable force of character had been the secret of Grace’s ascendancy and pre-eminence in regard to these great men. And having obtained her power, she did not hesitate to abuse it, as they say her sex generally do.

“In my opinion,” said Archie, “there’s been a mistake in Grace’s destiny. Her arrogance and sweet unreasonableness makes her look a bit out of drawing, I think. Strikes me that Nature planned her for a Gladstone or a Mailyphist, and then made her a girl for fun. But I believe she simply doesn’t care what we think of her.”

“Oh, yes, I do, you know, Archie,” said Grace; “I’m as cut up as can be. I’m quite put off my game. You had better let us have some more toast, Jane. Toddles, pass the marmalade—and the butter. Yes, I think I’ll have the butter, too.”

However, in my eyes Grace’s splendid isolation had such a nobility, such a dignity, such a pathos of its own, that it struck me with some suddenness that a little magnanimity might not be altogether out of place. It was patent, however, that her brothers had such firm convictions on the point[293] at issue that they were not likely to exercise it. Therefore, I had a try myself.

“My dear Grace,” said I, “don’t let’s worry about Biffin any more. I’m perfectly willing for him to stand, you know.”

“What!” cried the whole table with one voice.

Yet I ask you what could a fellow do under the circumstances? Splendid isolation is magnificent, of course, but not being one of Grace’s brothers, how could I help pitying the isolated?

The storm of contumely that my unconditional surrender provoked was woeful. Even the gallant Optimist reviled me. Their unanimity was crushing. It was not the question at issue that mattered so much; it was the general principle. It always is the general principle. They considered themselves betrayed. They had pledged themselves and their interests entirely in my cause, and then I calmly go over to the other side and merge that cause in the enemy’s. In fact, in the impassioned language of Toddles, the more they examined the fine points of my conduct, the deeper the iron entered into their souls.

“Jolly good o’ the iron,” said Grace; “improve ’em no end. Been wanting a tonic a long time.”

Grace, indeed, I am glad to state, took an entirely different view of my behaviour. Never had I seen her face so brightly eloquent as when she laid down her coffee-cup and looked at me.

[294]“Dimmy,” said she, “you’re a good sort, that’s what you are—a ripping good sort. Dimmy, you’re A 1!”

Her tone implied that she meant it, too. And really it was decidedly consoling to feel that we stood together facing scorn and disfavour on every hand. But it seemed that the tactful Grace knew how, when, and where to be generous. Or, no, I’m quite sure her generosity was not studied at all. It was just unaided nature!

“Look here, you men,” said she; “as Dimmy’s such a good sort, he’s not going to be such a good sort, do you see? No, I don’t mean that exactly; I mean——”

“If it’s sheer cheek that you mean, which we’ve every reason to fear that it is,” said Toddles, “we shall be very grateful if you’ll be content to consider it said. If we have any more before lunch I’m thinking that some of the batting won’t be of a very high order at Tonbridge on Monday.”

“That’ll do, Toddles,” said Grace. “Have a rest now, there’s a good little man. What was I saying? Oh, as Dimmy’s done the right thing, I’m going to do the right thing, too. Father, will you stand to-day, please?”

A rousing cheer greeted this announcement.

“I’ve always said,” remarked George, “that more can be done by the kindness method in the treatment[295] of these wild natures than cruelty, firearms, and that sort of thing. Here’s Grace lying down now, apparently as tame and docile as a kitten, without the use of red-hot irons or anything of the kind. And it’s so much better than burning her fur, don’t you know.”

The Rector consenting to stand, the affair terminated. Biffin, for that day at least, had to be content with the humbler functions of the scorer.

Breakfast over, we trooped out into the sun. And as we did so I am free to confess that my attire was a trifle irregular. Carteret being the most medium-built man amongst us, except in the matter of girth, and, therefore, the most resembling me, had very kindly lent me his buckskins; Charlie lent me one of his shirts, which, to my infinite pleasure, he assured me was the one he wore in the ’Varsity match, when he got so many Oxford wickets, and paid so very little for them; while Archie subscribed the identical pair of unmentionables in which he made his record score against Sussex at Brighton last year. In passing, it should be noted that record scores have quite a habit of getting themselves made against Sussex at Brighton. It is probably the sea air.

Despite this peculiar and rather extensive outfit, and an unbiassed umpire withal, I was earnestly assured that I could not possibly have a look in.[296] In fact, Grace was popularly supposed to be invincible in single combat under Rectory rules, on the Rectory wicket. A copy of the rules aforesaid was duly deposited in the Rector’s hands before the match began. And, although I was privileged to peruse them, the one conclusion to which they helped me was, that although the laws of the M.C.C. had very kindly and thoughtfully provided nine several ways in which a batsman might get out, those of the Rectory had most generously furnished nine and ninety.

I’ll admit at once that I had not the least confidence in myself. Everybody took a simple-minded pleasure in telling me that Grace never had been beaten single-handed on her own playing-piece.

“My boy,” said the little parson, with his excruciating friendliness, “that brown-haired, brown-faced, brown-booted, brown-hollanded person, familiarly known as Grace, is as full of wiles, tricks, and low devices as a certain person with a toasting-fork and a curly tail whom I shall not even permit myself to mention. If you can take Grace down a peg, posterity becomes your servant. Your fame will be for all time, your name will be in Wisden. For I believe I’m right in saying that under these conditions Grace would knock spots off half the Middlesex eleven.”

“Certain of it,” said Archie pleasantly. “She’s[297] a holy terror; and the charm of it is, Dimsdale, that she never has made a secret of what she’s going to do to you.”

“Why should I?” said Grace. “I’m going to give him a most awful licking for last night’s horrible behaviour.”

“All right,” said I meekly; “lick away.”

“Dimmy,” said she, “if I don’t, I’ll give you a scarf-pin.”

“I shall require more than a scarf-pin,” said I. And the emphasis I used was unmistakable.

“By Jove!” said Grace, “I was forgetting that. Thanks for the reminder, old chap. Will you call, or shall I?”

Next moment Grace had won the toss.

“Dimmy,” said she, “as your bowling’s so thoroughly depressing, and you’re not likely to have me out in a year, I think you’d better bat first. Get your pads on.”

WHEN I buckled on Toddles’ pads I had all the symptoms of a bad attack. I was a trifle dizzy, I was half blind, my heart just seemed to be trying what it could do, while my limbs were equally irresponsible. There was a great jug of cider laid on a table under the trees, and the Optimist would insist on my taking a draught of it, ere I went in to bat.

Grace placed her field with consummate care. Everybody was laughing as I took my guard.

“Don’t think he’ll stay three minutes,” said Carteret, quite audibly. Had Carteret only known, it was the kind of remark to make me stay three hours. That slice of Anglo-Saxon in my constitution, that I have already had occasion to advertise, objects above all things to be walked over rough-shod. I knit my teeth. I determined to perish or prevail. That moment, though, I should have been very well satisfied had the perishing anticipated itself by occurring there and then.

[299]Grace’s bowling was much as I had judged it to be. I knew her hereditary peculiarities would take a terrible amount of negotiating. And they certainly did. The very first ball I turned half round to, with the idea of getting it away to leg, whereon the flight, slow as it was, so deceived me that had it not been for my exceedingly thoughtful and well-trained right leg I should have suffered the humiliation of being clean bowled middle stump.

“How’s that?” cried Grace.

“Didn’t pitch straight,” said the Rector.

I sighed my deep relief.

“There she goes,” said T. S. M. from extra cover. “Begins her games at once. If Biffin had been standin’ it would have been ‘Hout, Miss!’ sure as a gun. Lucky for you, Dimsdale.”

“Tommy,” said Grace, “will you have the goodness to change places with Toddles at short-leg? Very close in please, Tommy. I’m going to bowl a few half-volleys just outside the leg stick; so you will look out for your face, won’t you? And you won’t funk ’em, will you, Tommy? And young boys shouldn’t be quite so jolly cheeky, should they?”

In addition to her curl, there were several other things appertaining to Grace’s bowling that required watching. Her length was perfect, and, strangely[300] enough, like her model the great Alfred Shaw, she had acquired the trick of heightening and lowering her delivery without any appreciable change in the action, but a pretty considerable amount in the flight. And, better than this, or worse, she was mistress in a measure of the painfully difficult art of making occasional balls “hang.” Although the Rectory wicket was well-nigh perfect, one had to watch her all the way, and then be prepared to alter one’s tactics at the last moment. She could make them “do a bit” both ways, and, in addition to all these accomplishments, she had the imperturbable temperament of the really great bowler—she didn’t mind being hit. That attitude of mind is undoubtedly the hall-mark of the master. She kept pitching up to me in the most audacious way. But I resolutely refused to “have a go,” until at last she had the downright impudence to send me a particularly slow full toss to leg, which I, of course, promptly cracked to the fence for four.

“Thought you wouldn’t be able to resist that,” she said winningly. “And do have a smack at this, Dimmy, just for fun.”

“This” was a particularly silly-looking half-volley well on the leg-side also. Having tasted the delights of a fourer so recently, I was naturally a bit headstrong and uplifted. I had a full sweep at it, and in the heat of the moment utterly[301] ignored the fatal curl. As a consequence I caught it on the extreme end of my bat, and it went spinning up a considerable height, straight into the hands of mid-on. My very soul groaned. To be caught napping so absurdly and so palpably! My emotions were so bitter that gall becomes honey by comparison. For I had walked into the trap with my eyes open.

Now the Optimist was the fieldsman at mid-on. And the dear, kind Optimist, most unselfish of men, had a fellow feeling that made him wondrous kind! The Optimist shaped for the catch in the crudest manner. He dropped me inexcusably in consequence. It was idle of him to urge, as urge he did, that the sun was in his eyes, and that he couldn’t see the catch. As the bowler fiercely pointed out, the sun was directly behind him.

“It must have been the shadow, then,” said the Optimist unblushingly. The roars of laughter that greeted his unscrupulous behaviour and his subsequent effrontery were infectious. Even the Rector contributed a hearty guffaw.

“Little Clumpton’s sold you this time!” cried T. S. M. in ecstasy. “You may be very clever, Grace, but you’ve just got left.”

The bowler’s dignity and self-restraint were really very fine, however. “He’ll simply get it[302] all the worse when I go in,” was her Spartan answer.

“We shall all take extremely great care to collar anything you put up, though,” said T.S.M., “so you’d better play piano till you’ve got the runs off.”

Grace continued to bowl even wilier and slower than before. Runs were very difficult to obtain, but, nevertheless, I warily, cautiously obtained a few. The bulk of them were made by means of leg touches and pushes, and occasional big singles into the country. She was too slow to cut; behind-the-wicket strokes were, by Rectory rules and the laws of single wicket also, ineligible. But I was able once to regale myself with a hit past cover for three. This was the only time, however, that I got a chance to play my favourite stroke, as the bowler was evidently of opinion that it was too expensive to feed. I had made twenty-three by careful play when I got into two minds with one that curled outrageously, and hung as well. I returned it as tamely as possible to the bowler, who clasped it lovingly and said: “Poor old Dimmy! Did ’um, then!”

Thereon she walked off under the trees to a little light and liquid refreshment, which for her partook of the nature of that innocuous concoction known as stone-ginger; whilst I ruefully unbuckled the pads of the ironical Toddles.

[303]All things considered, I felt that I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my score. Twenty-three was quite the maximum of what I had expected to get, as from the first I had not been disposed to under-rate the excellence of Grace’s bowling. Indeed, she was kind enough to say herself, in a reflective tone,—

“Your batting’s really very decent, Dimmy, very decent, indeed, you know. So glad you watch the ball. Strikes me you’re the sort o’ man to get runs on a bad wicket. With a bit more experience you ought to do things. Oughtn’t he, boys?”

“Oh, of course,” said T. S. M. “If he can get twenty-three against your bowlin’ he must be phenomenal. Reg’lar freak—fit for Barnum!”

“You’ve never got twenty-three against it, Tommy, anyhow,” said Grace.

“Such a beas’ly bore, don’t-cher-know,” said the Harrow captain wearily, “to keep hittin’ girls to the fence, and then havin’ to go and fag after it for ’em.”

“Why, you know quite well, Tommy,” said his sister, in a very pained voice, “that I’ve never let you fetch a ball for me in your life. No, never. It’s shameful of you, Tommy, to talk like that, ’cause it’s not true. Look here, you men, it’s not true, is it?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Toddles. “You’d scorn to[304] do it, Grace. We all know that. You’re far too good a sportsman—I mean sportswoman.”

“Stick to the man,” said Grace. “Sounds so much primer, somehow.”

“What’s Toddles up to now?” said Charlie suspiciously. “Whenever he talks to Grace in that kind of way there’s something behind it. Does he want to smoke in the drawing-room, or is it breakfast in bed? Grace, distrust that man. Last time he was allowed to put sugar in his tea with his fingers, instead of the tongs.”

“I like that,” said Grace. “Why, that’s what you all do, you horrible creatures! Even Dimmy does.”

“‘Even Dimmy does!’” repeated Archie. “That’s your batting, my boy.”

And as I actually saw Grace blush at Archie’s pointed remark I began to persuade myself that it really must be my batting.

When Grace went in, she did not put on pads, for a sufficient reason, but it amused us all, and particularly her parent, to see her don a right-hand batting glove.

“It’s all right, father,” said she. “Sha’n’t need it, of course. It’s only out of respect for Dimmy, you know. Looks a bit cheeky to go in with nothing on, as though you were only playing golf or marbles, or something like that.”

[305]“Or having a bath,” said Toddles, sotto voce.

It was characteristic of Grace that she never held people guilty of laughing directly at her. And I am not sure, either, whether this simpleness of mind did not spring from a sublime faith in herself and all her works. Certainly when she set about getting the twenty-four runs necessary for my defeat, she proceeded to wipe them off in a magnificently confident manner. My first three balls yielded five.

This certainly would not do. I must try lobs. But why, oh, why had my youth been so grievously misspent? Oh, why, I asked myself in the bitterness of my spirit had I always been bat in hand at the nets, slogging away for hours, instead of doing now and then a little honest bowling? It made me giddy to think of what service a decent length and a fair command of the ball would be to me at this moment. Oh, if I could only bowl! If I could only bowl! Young men, I exhort you to heed these awful consequences. Batting in itself is very alluring, but there are other things in cricket besides a cut for four, delightful as that is. When the other side are in, it is well to have a dim idea of how to get them out. At this dread hour, owing to the errors of my childhood, I had not, alas! the remotest notion how to do so.

[306]Nevertheless, the veiled jeers of the field, the frank amusement of the umpire, and the downright contempt of the person wielding the willow, made my Anglo-Saxon once more rise within me. Grace’s does-he-call-this-bowling air was most exasperating. But I still went on in my dogged, defiant, get-there-sometime style. I might be without hope, but I was determined that the enemy should not know it.

Bowling slow, elementary, underhand twisters, I kept running after them up the pitch in a frankly dare-devil manner, and several times took red-hot cracks travelling to mid-off about ten yards from Grace’s bat. Runs continued to come, however, just as they thought fit apparently, but my fielding was so whole-hearted that broad grins presently succeeded derisive smiles on the faces of those who witnessed it. But the five became fifteen in no time. Nine more and all was over. The imminence of disaster nerved me to superhuman efforts. Grace mistimed one ball a little, and as it rose from her bat for a short distance, I sprawled arms and legs up the pitch, and literally hurled myself at it. I just contrived to touch it with my finger-tips as it fell. Had it come off it would have been something to talk about; as it was, it cost divers seasoned cricketers a blink of astonishment.

[307]“Dimmy,” said the one wielding the willow, “aren’t you afraid o’ your backbone at all?”

It was apparent that she was becoming impressed. With that thought I recalled the words of the penetrating Archie: “All women have their weakness. Grace’s is for good fielding.” I must show her what I could do. After vainly striving to reach one that she pulled well wide of mid-on for three, she said,—

“Dimmy, please don’t do that. It worries me. I’m so afraid that you’ll twist yourself into something that could never be untied. That would be horrible, wouldn’t it? And I’m so afraid of your backbone.”

“It is in your own power,” said I, “to end these gyrations. You have only got to get out, you know.”

Her score had now reached twenty. Four more and a life’s happiness was wrecked. Hope there was none. She was thoroughly set, and capable of doing anything with the miserable stuff that I was rolling up. It was in vain that I altered the position of the field after the delivery of every ball. She inevitably dispatched the one that followed past the precise place from which the man had just been taken. Her batting was really cruel in its complacence and resource. The grim gleam that illuminated her look[308] knocked at my heart. A gleam does not knock as a rule, I know, but many and strange things are allowed to happen to the heart of a man in my desperate predicament. The light-minded fieldsmen thought it quite a joke, however, and they proferred no end of wise suggestions. Had I not better have my point a bit squarer; my mid-off a bit deeper; my extra cover a bit more round; and the two men guarding the cucumber frame standing in front of the cucumbers, instead of sitting on the woodwork?

I thanked them in a chastened tone for being so very helpful.

My pitiful bowling has already been the subject of various painful home truths. But I do believe that my fielding was not unworthy of kind phrases. At least, it argues unusual excellence to gain the open approbation of the great. Yet when I stopped three smashing half-volley hits in sharp succession, and cut the knees of Archie’s unmentionables in a fall I had in endeavouring to combine the duties of cover-point and the bowler, I heard Grace sigh most distinctly, and Archie said,—

“Dimsdale, are these acrobatic performances intended to divert Grace’s attention from run-getting? or are they merely to afford a little variety entertainment to the lookers-on? If that’s[309] the idea, I think we can compliment you on a daring and original turn.”

But I repeat that I heard Grace distinctly sigh. Could it be that my fielding was playing havoc with that relentless bosom? Oh, that this be so! Our scores were now level. And was it not strange that, though Grace had been making runs precisely as she pleased, she suddenly ceased to get them altogether? Instead of playing a wonderfully aggressive and confident game, she began to vacillate. Nay, she half-heartedly blocked balls that she had been previously hitting to the fence. What could it mean? Was it possible that good fielding was in truth the one weakness of Grace the unsusceptible? What more likely? Was she not a cricketer to her finger-tips? and is not sound fielding as likely to appeal to persons of that calibre as the higher virtues?

“What’s old Grace rotting at?” cried Charlie.

“My opinion is she wants Dimmy to bowl her,” said George.

“Just look how she’s nursing the bowling now,” the Optimist said.

“She might be playin’ Humphreys, the way in which she pokes at those cuckoos,” said T. S. M.

Grace had now been more than two overs without getting a run. And the agonized expression that she wore seemed to say quite plainly,

[310]“Oh, Dimmy! why don’t you bowl me?”

Yes, my fielding had done it. But of bowling her I was, alas! physically incapable. In my anxiety to improve I got worse. Indeed, I was so totally overborne by the requirements of the situation that I must have given the match away myself by bowling a wide had not Grace had the presence of mind to step across her wicket, and thereby just succeed in covering a ball that looked like hitting the fat barrister at point. Her face appeared to say, “Oh, Dimmy! do keep off wides and no balls!”

Next ball, however, she took the liberty, as was her arbitrary fashion, of settling the business for herself: Grace deliberately knocked down her wicket. Yes, I repeat it in bald prose: Grace deliberately knocked down her wicket. As a preliminary, she withdrew her bat far away from the ball, evidently in the forlorn hope that she would be bowled outright. But as the ball did not happen to be straight by a good deal, and seeing that so long as she remained in my own erratic trundling constituted a source of danger in itself, therefore did she turn round and reduce the stumps with the back of her bat.

“Why, Grace,” demanded the General Public eagerly, “what in thunder are you playing at?”

“There’s no declaration law in the Rectory[311] rules,” said Grace. “So a side can’t declare its innings, don’t you see?”

“Been inadvertently omitted,” said Charlie.

“But what did you want to declare for?” said T. S. M. “You hadn’t won.”

“Yes, tell us why you wanted to declare,” said Toddles, with his wickedest expression.

Perhaps it was the sun that made Grace so hot and red; but, be that as it may, the fact must be put in history.

“’Cause I did,” said Grace.

“A feminine reason, I fear,” said the Rector.

“Well, I think it’s something like this,” said I, with rather more valour than discretion: “there must be lots of times, don’t you know, when a girl would like to declare, and she can’t declare, because, according to the laws of the game, there’s no rule whereby she can declare. You see it, don’t you?”

“Clear as mud,” said Charlie. “She can declare when she can’t declare, and she—— Say it again, old chap. Certain to get the hang of it before the end of the season.”

“O’ course, a girl can’t declare, you know, Charlie,” said Grace.

“Well, why a girl?” asked Toddles, hiding his face in his cap. “And why should she want to declare? And what is it she wants to declare?”

[312]“Depends on what you’re playing at,” said Archie darkly.

“I am afraid, gentlemen,” said the Rector, “that you are not entirely familiar with the rules of the game. I think you may safely leave the matter with Laura. I’ve always said that she had more purely technical knowledge than all the rest of us put together.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Biffin, “but I’ve allus said the very same about Miss Laura. Allus back her opinion, I would. Although, begging pardon, sir, I think she’s fair hout this time.”

“Clean bowled, Biffin, I suppose you mean?” said the Rector.

“Hout, sir, fair hout!” said that ancient villain, chuckling till the score-book shook.

Meantime the Rector was patting his daughter’s cheek. And almost simultaneously some person or persons unknown buffeted me violently in the ribs. My suspicions rested on Toddles.

From The Morning Post:

THE END

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