"That 'one-leg' all right? Thanks."
He was proceeding to look round the field when a gentle voice from behind him said: "If you wouldn't mind moving a bit, sir, I could bowl."
"Oh, is it over?" said the editor airily, trying to hide his confusion. "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon."
Still he had certainly impressed the sister of their captain, and it was dreadful to think of the disillusionment that might follow at any moment. However, as it happened, he had yet another trick up his sleeve. Bolton hit a ball to cover, and the editor, in the words of the local paper, "most sportingly sacrificed his wicket when he saw that his partner had not time to get back. It was a question, however, whether there was ever a run possible."
Which shows that the reporter did not know of the existence of their captain's sister.
When I came in, the score was fifty-one for nine, and Henry was still in. I had only one ball to play, so I feel that I should describe it in full. I have four good scoring strokes—the cut, the drive, the hook and the glance. As the bowler ran up to the crease I decided to cut the ball to the ropes. Directly, however, it left his hand, I saw that it was a ball to hook, and accordingly I changed my attitude to the one usually adopted for that stroke. But the ball came up farther than I expected, so at the last moment I drove it hard past the bowler. That at least was the idea. Actually, it turned out to be a beautiful glance shot to the leg boundary. Seldom, if ever, has Beldam had such an opportunity for four action photographs on one plate.
Henry took a sixer next ball, and so we won. And the rest of the story of my team, is it not written in the journals of The Sportsman and The Chartleigh Watchman, and in the hearts of all who were privileged to compose it? But how the editor took two jokes I told him in the train, and put them in his paper (as his own), and how Carey challenged the engine-driver to an eighteen-hole solitaire match, and how ... these things indeed shall never be divulged.
EX NIHILO FIT MULTUM
I should like to explain just what happened to the ball. In the first place it was of an irreproachable length, and broke very sharply and cleverly from the leg. (The bowler, I am sure, will bear me out in this.) Also it rose with great suddenness ... and, before I had time to perfect any adequate system of defence, took me on the knee, and from there rolled on to the off-stump. There was a considerable amount of applause on the part of the field, due, no doubt, to the feeling that a dangerous batsman had been dismissed without scoring. I need hardly add that I did not resent this appreciation.