"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder.
Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket per se, which is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.' That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances. But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook—I speak as a pretty wide traveller—this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering."
"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot, "What are you reading?"
The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however, by an effort.
"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say that the Johnny knows nothing about it."
"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to a bad end."
Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes.
In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up.
"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches."
"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?"