“I meant that he had a great bushy beard. He looked like the pirate chief in your picture-books, but he had as kind a heart as a child. I have been told that it was the terrible things in this war that really killed him. Grand old W. G.!”
“Was he the best bat in the world, Daddy?”
“Of course he was,” said Daddy, beginning to enthuse to the delight of the clever little plotter in the bed. “There never was such a bat—never in the world—and I don’t believe there ever could be again. He didn’t play on smooth wickets, as they do now. He played where the wickets were all patchy, and you had to watch the ball right on to the bat. You couldn’t look at it before it hit the ground and think, ‘That’s all right. I know where that one will be!’ My word, that was cricket. What you got you earned.”
“Did you ever see W. G. make a hundred, Daddy?”
“See him! I’ve fielded out for him and melted on a hot August day while he made a hundred and fifty. There’s a pound or two of your Daddy somewhere on that field yet. But I loved to see it, and I was always sorry when he got out
for nothing, even if I were playing against him.”
“Did he ever get out for nothing?”
“Yes, dear; the first time I ever played in his company he was given out leg-before-wicket before he made a run. And all the way to the pavilion—that’s where people go when they are out—he was walking forward, but his big black beard was backward over his shoulder as he told the umpire what he thought.”
“And what did he think?”
“More than I can tell you, Dimples. But I dare say he was right to be annoyed, for it was a left-handed bowler, bowling round the wicket, and it is very hard to get leg-before to that. However, that’s all Greek to you.”