“Well, you may always miss that,” said Markham, “just as you did, Tom! Besides, if you hit it you score runs.”
“Well, if you hit the little brown bird twice, you score a brace of partridges. Besides, you have a nice walk over turnips and mangolds——”
“Well, you can do that in August.”
“Oh, Teddy, there’s no hope for you!” said Tom. “When you die and go to hell, they’ll make you shoot all day until you love it, and then they’ll send you to heaven, where there is no shooting at all. I don’t suppose there are such things as rocketing angels, are there?”
“Tom, the only excuse for being profane is being funny.”
“All right. But I don’t see why there shouldn’t be. There is such a thing as a shooting star.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Tom. “Of course there was some connection in my mind, or I shouldn’t have said it.”
“Do you mean that no one, even you, can talk sheer drivel?”
“Don’t ask so many questions, Teddy. We shall be all out in a minute; there’s the ninth wicket down. Come on, we’ll give those beggars a chance. You know it is all nonsense saying that trousers and shirts are not beautiful. Look at Harold bowling there. Do you see how the wind blows the shirt tight over his shoulder? That’s an opportunity for a sculptor which the Greeks didn’t use—you get all the shape of the arm, and that look of wind and motion which the loose flap of the sleeve gives.”