Anne's terrible good nature, and other stories for children

by E. V. Lucas

How it came about that Roderick bowled C. B. Fry was this way. Middlesex were playing Sussex, and Mr. Fry went to the nets early to practise, and Roderick’s father bowled to him and let Roderick have the ball now and then. And whether it was that Mr. Fry was not thinking, or was looking another way, or was simply very good-natured, I don’t know, but one of Roderick’s sneaks got under his bat and hit the stumps. (They were not sneaks, you must understand, because he wanted to bowl sneaks, but because he was not big enough to bowl any other way for 22 yards. He was only ten.) Roderick thus did that day what no one else could do, for Mr. Fry went in and made 143 not out, in spite of all the efforts of Albert Trott and Tarrant and J. T. Hearne.

Roderick’s bedroom walls had been covered with portraits of cricketers for years, but after he bowled out C. B. Fry he took away a lot of them and made an open space with the last picture postcard of Mr. Fry right in the middle of it, and underneath, on the mantelpiece, he put the ball he had bowled him with, which his father gave him, under a glass shade. And other little St. John’s Wood boys, friends of Roderick’s from the Abbey Road, and Hamilton Terrace, and Loudoun Road, and that very attractive red-brick village with a green of its own just off the Avenue Road, used to come and see it, and stand in front of it and hold their breath, rather like little girls looking at a new baby.

Roderick also had a “Cricketers’ Birthday Book,” so that when he came down to breakfast he used to say, “Tyldesley’s thirty-five to-day,” “Hutchings is twenty-four,” and so on. And he knew the initials of every first-class amateur and the Christian name of every pro.

That was not Roderick’s only cricketing triumph. It is true that he had never succeeded in bowling out any other really swell batsman, but he had shaken hands with Sammy Woods and J. R. Mason, and one day Lord Hawke took him by both shoulders and lifted him to one side, saying: “Now then, Tommy, out of the way.” But these were only chance acquaintances. His real cricketing friend was Tom Stick, the ground bowler.

Tom Stick came from Devonshire, which is a county without a first-class eleven that plays the M.C.C. in August, and he lived in a little street off Lisson Grove, where he kept a bird-fancier’s shop. For most professional cricketers, you know, are something else as well, or they would not be able to live in the winter. Many of them make cricket-bats, many keep inns, many are gardeners. I know one who is a picture-framer, and another an organist, while George Hirst, who is the greatest of them all, makes toffee. Well, Tom Stick was a bird-fancier, with a partner named Dick Crawley, who used to mind the shop when Tom had to be at Lord’s bowling to gentlemen, Roderick’s father among them, or playing against Haileybury or Rugby or wherever he was sent to do all the hard work and go in last.

Roderick’s father was very fond of Tom and was quite happy to know that Roderick was with him, so that Roderick not only used to join Tom at Lord’s, but also at the shop off Lisson Grove, where he often helped in cleaning out the cages and feeding the birds and teaching the bullfinches to whistle, and was very good friends also with certain puppies and rabbits. His own dog, a fox-terrier named “Sinhji,” had come from Tom.

Tom used to bowl to Roderick in the mornings before the gentlemen arrived for their practice, and he taught him to hold his bat straight and not slope it, and to keep his feet still and not draw them away when the ball was coming (which are the two most important things in batting), and it was he who stopped Roderick from carrying an autograph-book about and worrying the cricketers for their signatures. In fact, Tom was a kind of nurse to Roderick, and they were so much together that, whereas Tom was known to Roderick’s small friends as “Roddy’s Pro,” Roderick was known to Tom’s friends as “Sticky’s Shadow.”

Now it happened that last summer Roderick’s father had been making a great many runs for the M.C.C. in one of their tours. (Roderick did not see him, for he had to stay at home and do his lessons; but his father sent him a telegram after each innings.) Mr. Bulstrode (as we are calling him) batted so well, indeed, that when he returned to London he was asked to play for Middlesex against Yorkshire on the following Monday, to take the place of one of the regular eleven who was ill; and you may be sure he said yes, for, although he was now thirty-two, this was the first time he had ever been asked to play for his county.

Roderick, you may be equally sure, was also pleased; and when his father suddenly said to him, “Would you like to come with me?” his excitement was almost too great to bear.

“And Tom too?” he asked, after a minute or so.