“Mr. Dimsdale,” she said, after Captain George had carried out the sedulously conveyed commands of his sister, “Mr. Dimsdale, what were you about, to get out to a long hop of my young brother Tom’s? He can’t bowl a little bit. No length no spin, no break, no devil, no anything. Plain as print! Over-confidence, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid it was,” I confessed.
“Great pity,” she said reflectively. “I should rather have liked you to stay a bit; you’d have been worth looking at. And I’ve just got my doubts about that decision. L B W to left arm round is always a bit fishy, isn’t it? Not, you know, that I’m at all sorry that you’re out. I’m Hickory, of course, and all that, although I do like to see a man play the game. You see, I’m sorry and I’m not sorry. Oh, hang it! I can’t explain it!”
Both the Optimist and I had the ill manners to smile with some breadth. But the solecism was worth committing, if only for the sake of observing the gleam of envy that ran along the row of cricketers on the pavilion front. Weren’t we enjoying ourselves! And they could have been so much farther from the mark. I might never have been leg before in my life.
“’Mustn’t get over-confident, you know, if you’re going to make a first-rater,” Miss Grace said authoritatively; “great mistake. But I believe you were not so very confident when you first went in. In fact, I thought you were just—just a wee bit nervous. I wouldn’t have minded betting a shilling that Charlie did you first over. Weren’t you a bit nervous?”
“Oh dear, no,” I said, resenting the imputation with great robustness. “I’m never nervous.”
She was evidently a young person of the most horrible penetration. What could have put these ideas into her mind?
“Don’t you think,” she said suddenly, “that my young brother Tom would get on better if he took to playing marbles? His bowling is dreadfully awful, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s not so good as your brother Charlie’s,” I said diplomatically.
“Thank you,” she said sardonically; “I’ll write that down. But say, yes; I do want you to say, yes.”