“No,” said the other, “that is hockey. Another game.”
“And is there a ball there too?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the reply, “a ball.”
“But see the garden of that house,” he remarked; “that is not hockey. There are only four, but two are women. They also leap about and run and wave their arms. Is there a ball there?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “there is a ball there. That is lawn tennis.”
“But the white lines,” he said. “Is not that, perhaps, out-door mathematics? That surely may help to serious things?”
“No,” the other replied, “only another game. There are millions of such gardens in England with similar lines.”
“Yes,” he said, for they were then over Surbiton, “I see them at this moment by the hundred.”
They passed on to London. It was at that time of September when football and cricket overlap, and there was not only a crowded cricket match at the Oval but an even more crowded football match at Blackheath.
The foreigner caught sight of the Oval first. “Ah,” he said, “you deceived me. For here is your cricket again, played amid a vast concourse. How can you call it a game? These crowds would not come to see a game played, but would play one themselves. It must be more than you said; it must be a form of tactics that can help to retain England’s supremacy, and these men are here to learn.”