“Perfectly,” said I.
“Let’s see you do it then.”
Alas! I did do it, and the ball went spinning out of my hand at right angles, and hit Biffin very tenderly on the head.
“That’s how you get ‘devil,’ you know,” said my tutor, with a very kindergarten kind of air, and pretending at the same time to be quite unconscious of this melancholy incident.
“It’s the devil,” I said simply.
“I must show you how to do it,” said my tutor.
“Do, please, by all means,” said I quickly.
I was, of course, as a batsman and an opponent, particularly anxious to obtain a private view of her celebrated bowling. And the specimen she did send down, said as clearly as possible that report had not overpraised her prowess. There was a mastery, an ease, and a combination of qualities therein that said here was a born bowler. Hers, as has been remarked, was an Alfred Shaw style of action, only that in accordance with the modern theory she brought her arm as high over as she could possibly get it. She was decidedly slow, but possessed the necessary and fatal “nip,” and to see the ball curl one way from her hand, and then the moment it dropped quickly twist in the opposite direction was, to a batsman who had got to face it presently, little short of alarming.
“Why,” I cried, “why, Grace, your bowling’s perfectly magnificent!”
“Oh no, Dimmy, it’s not,” said Grace. “It’s quite common or garden. If I’d got a bit more pace now it might do things. But with more pace I can’t get the break, and that’s what makes me so sick. The Guv’nor could, you know. He was a bowler if you like. I’ve bowled at Biffin for hours an’ hours, yet if I begin to try medium the ‘work’ don’t act.”