Miss Grace’s annoyance was increasing in company with the score. As the sting was extracted from Hickory’s bowling, and it came in for severer punishment, she grew particularly caustic in her criticisms. And the greater her anger, the greater her frankness, till presently she became a real delight to sit and listen to. Before long the Optimist and I were holding our sides for simple mirth.
“I don’t wonder at it,” she said; “must be no end of a joke to you to see ’em tossing up this sort of ‘tosh.’ And their fielding, too. Just look at the wicket-keeper; why will he keep snapping ’em, instead of waiting and taking ’em gently, like McGregor? There, that’s Halliday’s fifty; I know he’ll get his hundred. But don’t cheer, please. Look at the luck he’s had. It’s too bad of that wretched Toddles!”
Poor Miss Grace was almost tearful when her mind reverted to that catastrophe. There was undoubtedly a rod in pickle for the hapless Elphinstone.
“Ninety up. Really this is too bad!” cried she. “Charlie’s going off now; had a pretty long spell, too. But they’ve only got thirty-one off him.”
“Fine bowler, isn’t he?” I said, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters; “but he’s had no luck this morning. Grand built chap as well.”
“Could do with a bit more head though,” said his censorious sister, who seemed so severe a critic that it struck me that it was a pity the Athenæum did not know about her. She would have given the sprouting novelists and spring poets some talkings-to!
Runs were coming now with exhilarating frequency. The Captain was beginning to score all round the wicket, off anything they liked to send him. There was no more dangerous or resourceful bat in England when once he got his eye in. The Ancient, too, was moving steadily in the direction of his fifty. It would be idle to insist that he had a pleasing style; indeed, he did not appear to have a style of any kind. He had no physique, and you might watch him get a hundred, and then wonder how he’d got them, as he hadn’t a single stroke worthy of the name. But there was no man on the side who got runs with such striking regularity; and when the meteors and comets had appeared and disappeared, this ordinary fixed star was still at the wickets, cocking ’em under his leg for two and sneaking short ones. From time immemorial he had done the same. He had played oftener in Little Clumpton v. Hickory than any of the giants of the past, and with such an honourable distinction that the aggregate of his runs greatly excelled that of anybody else. How far back in antiquity the Ancient had first enjoyed his being, history never could determine. In the Little Clumpton v. Hickory of twenty years ago, when the Ancient made 64 not out, and pulled the match out of the fire, tradition said that he looked even older than he looked to-day; and his manner was so perennially youthful, too, that it was not until he took his cap off, that one would have guessed he was a patriarch. Men might come and men might go, but he went on for ever.
“Hundred and ten up,” called Miss Grace.
“How many’s Oldknow got?” the Optimist inquired.
“Why, he’s actually got thirty-three!” she said, in a startled tone. “How has he got them? I’m waiting to see him make a decent stroke. But he don’t edge ’em, and he don’t fluke ’em, and he don’t give chances, and he don’t look as though they’ll bowl him in a year. Thirty-three? Isn’t it marvellous? He can’t bat a bit, though, can he?”