“Why?”
“Well, you see, I maintain in the face of all my people that it is absolute rubbish. They all think he’s rather good for a boy. They say at Harrow that he’s going to make another Dowson. But if that’s so, it don’t take much to make a Dowson, does it? Do, Mr. Dimsdale, please say that you think it’s awful rot. It is, you know, really. And the amount of side that boy’s got on is something extraordinary. He might be the Old Man himself. Thinks himself no end of a swell ’cause he’s diddled a few schoolboys with his donkey-drops. Never saw such a length in my life. Why don’t George shunt him and give Billington a try?”
Even as she spoke the captain, who was now thoroughly set, was seen to gather himself for a great effort. At last he ventured to have a go at this severely criticised slow bowler. Up and up went the ball a remarkable height, and, to the horror of the Optimist and myself, we saw that it must drop into the hands of the little parson just below us on the boundary. We both held our breaths in a spasm of suspense, but Miss Grace seemed as happy as possible.
“It’s all right,” she said cheerfully; “Toddles’ll have him. He never drops anything he can get to; and he’s judging this to a ‘T.’ What a height it is, though, and deceptive, too! He’ll have to go back a bit now.”
Next instant a derisive howl broke from the crowd. The little parson, famed the whole of England over for his brilliancy and certainty at third man and in the country, having slightly misjudged the flight and height of the catch, had had to go back in a hurry at the last moment, with the result that his hands and body were in a very overbalanced kind of position in which to receive the ball. He had failed to hold it.
“Oh, Toddles! Toddles!” cried Miss Grace, in agonized accents; “what are you doing?”
The relief of the Optimist and myself was such that we must have hugged one another had we not been in a place so public. Poor Miss Grace, though, was perfectly crimson with mortification, and we could fairly hear the tears in her voice as she said with a sublime pathos, “He’ll get a hundred now!”
CHAPTER VII
Conversational
“I ’LL never forgive that wretched Toddles!” said Miss Grace. “It was careless of him. It’s inexcusable for a county man to drop anything. The little brute!”
“But, my dear Grace,” said the Optimist, kind soul, who looked at everything from a humanitarian standpoint, “the best men are liable to err.”