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 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 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.”

“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 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 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 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 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.”

“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 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.

“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 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.

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 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.