“I like that,” said Grace. “Why, that’s what you all do, you horrible creatures! Even Dimmy does.”
“‘Even Dimmy does!’” repeated Archie. “That’s your batting, my boy.”
And as I actually saw Grace blush at Archie’s pointed remark I began to persuade myself that it really must be my batting.
When Grace went in, she did not put on pads, for a sufficient reason, but it amused us all, and particularly her parent, to see her don a right-hand batting glove.
“It’s all right, father,” said she. “Sha’n’t need it, of course. It’s only out of respect for Dimmy, you know. Looks a bit cheeky to go in with nothing on, as though you were only playing golf or marbles, or something like that.”
“Or having a bath,” said Toddles, sotto voce.
It was characteristic of Grace that she never held people guilty of laughing directly at her. And I am not sure, either, whether this simpleness of mind did not spring from a sublime faith in herself and all her works. Certainly when she set about getting the twenty-four runs necessary for my defeat, she proceeded to wipe them off in a magnificently confident manner. My first three balls yielded five.
This certainly would not do. I must try lobs. But why, oh, why had my youth been so grievously misspent? Oh, why, I asked myself in the bitterness of my spirit had I always been bat in hand at the nets, slogging away for hours, instead of doing now and then a little honest bowling? It made me giddy to think of what service a decent length and a fair command of the ball would be to me at this moment. Oh, if I could only bowl! If I could only bowl! Young men, I exhort you to heed these awful consequences. Batting in itself is very alluring, but there are other things in cricket besides a cut for four, delightful as that is. When the other side are in, it is well to have a dim idea of how to get them out. At this dread hour, owing to the errors of my childhood, I had not, alas! the remotest notion how to do so.
Nevertheless, the veiled jeers of the field, the frank amusement of the umpire, and the downright contempt of the person wielding the willow, made my Anglo-Saxon once more rise within me. Grace’s does-he-call-this-bowling air was most exasperating. But I still went on in my dogged, defiant, get-there-sometime style. I might be without hope, but I was determined that the enemy should not know it.
Bowling slow, elementary, underhand twisters, I kept running after them up the pitch in a frankly dare-devil manner, and several times took red-hot cracks travelling to mid-off about ten yards from Grace’s bat. Runs continued to come, however, just as they thought fit apparently, but my fielding was so whole-hearted that broad grins presently succeeded derisive smiles on the faces of those who witnessed it. But the five became fifteen in no time. Nine more and all was over. The imminence of disaster nerved me to superhuman efforts. Grace mistimed one ball a little, and as it rose from her bat for a short distance, I sprawled arms and legs up the pitch, and literally hurled myself at it. I just contrived to touch it with my finger-tips as it fell. Had it come off it would have been something to talk about; as it was, it cost divers seasoned cricketers a blink of astonishment.