Willow the king

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.”

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?”

“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.”

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 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 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 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.”

“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 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, 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.”

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.”

“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 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, 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 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. 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’! 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 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 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. 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.

“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, “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 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 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 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!”

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 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 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.