“No,” said another, “it isn’t fair. He couldn’t do it off Glyn Severn’s bowling; not that we chaps bowl badly. Severn calls some of us toppers, and last week and several times since he put me up to giving the balls a twist. You know; you saw—those long-pitched balls that drop in as quiet as a mouse, and look as if they are going wide, but curl in round the end of a fellow’s bat, just tap a stump, and down go the bails before he knows where he is.”
“Yes; but I don’t see much good in that,” said another. “You didn’t take much out of it yesterday when you put old Shanks’s wicket down, and he gave you a lick on the head for it.”
“I don’t care if he’d given me a dozen,” said the little fellow with a grin. “I took old Bully Bounce’s wicket. Oh, didn’t it make him wild!”
“Yes; but it isn’t fair, as I said before,” cried the first speaker. “He could do what he liked with our bowling before, but now we have got to run nearly off our legs to fetch up fivers. I say it isn’t fair. He must have got half-a-pound of lead let into the end of his bat. Took it down to the carpenter’s, he did, and made old Gluepot bore three holes in the bottom with a centre-bit, pour in a lot of melted lead, and then plug the bottom up again with wood.”
“Here, I know,” said one; “let’s watch for our chance, and get Wrench—he’ll keep it a secret; he hates Longshanks—let’s ask him to make a fire under the wash-house copper, and one of us could do it I’ll volunteer. I’ll smuggle out Slegge’s bat, and it wouldn’t take long. Just hold it on the fire where it’s hottest, and the lead would all melt and run out.”
“And what about the end of the bat?” said another.
“Well, it would be all light again, just the same as it was before.”
“Light?” cried the objector. “Why, it would be all black. The wood would all burn away before the fire got to the lead.”
“Would it?” said the inventor of the scheme thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose it would. But we must do something.”
This was agreed to nem con, and, after a long meeting for boys, their faces indicated a satisfactory termination of their debate.