“Bill,” said Mary to me on the Thursday morning, “I do hope you see them all right to-day—Gerry Prescott’s getting a bit of ‘roll’ on, charming man though he be.”
I finished my fourth egg and remarked, “Thanks, Mary—I’ll have a good try, but I don’t seem able to do anything right lately—still my luck must turn before long. Thanks again.” She slipped over to the sideboard and helped herself to some Kedgeree—smiled—and then replied, “I think it will—to-day.” The rest of the crowd then joined us—Jack, Gerry Prescott, Helen and Dick Arkwright, Sir Charles and Lady Considine, three boys from the ’Varsity, Tennant, Daventry and Robertson, and two Service men, friends of Arkwright, Major Hornby and Lieutenant Barker—the last five all pretty decent cricketers—the rest of the eleven being recruited from the Manor staff.
It was, I remember, a perfectly glorious summer morning. One’s thoughts instinctively flew to the whirr of the mowing machine and a real plumb wicket. The insects hummed in the sun, and there was a murmur of bees that gave everybody a feeling that an English summer morning in Sussex could give anything in Creation a start and a beating.
“Toppin’ mornin’—what?” said Prescott. “Feel like gettin’ some more to-day, if we bat.”
“You won’t,” said Dick Arkwright. “You’ll field, and this big brute of a Bill can get rid of some of his disgraceful paunch. He hasn’t had much exercise all the week. Exceptin’ of course walkin’ back to the pavilion.”
“Feeling funny, aren’t you?” I sallied back. “And as for ‘big brutes’ and ‘paunches,’ neither you nor Prescott has a lot to telegraph home about.”
Actually I was about a couple of inches taller than either of them and decidedly heavier.
“Anybody of the old crowd playing for the Rovers, Jack?” queried Helen.
“Don’t know, haven’t seen the team yet.”
Daventry, I think, handed the Sporting Life to the two girls. They scanned the names.