“Don’t you want me to be friends with Lord Charlesbury’s little boy, Mummie?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“Well, he’s at Hurst. He’s in the Eleven there.”

“I know.”

“Shouldn’t I be in the Eleven, too?”

“No. You don’t play nearly well enough yet, darling.”

Cecil flushed and then said defiantly: “Diana thinks I would be, and she knows more about cricket than you do, Mummie—you said yourself that she does. She said—she said——”

“What did she say?”

Diana Grierson-Amberly was surely not prone to the paying of unmerited compliments, and Rose felt curious.

“She said I ought to be at Hurst and that I bowled better than that other little boy, Hugh. She did, Mummie.”