A roar of laughter considerably interfered with Miss Grace’s narrative.
“Grace, if you keep playing this game,” said the best bowler in England, fighting for his breath, “I shall die young. Name inadvertently omitted’s rather good.”
“Certain it has been,” said Miss Grace with deep conviction. “Stoddy would never be such a blind owl as to leave you out on purpose, Charlie. I’ve a very high opinion of Stoddy.”
“Stoddy will be pleased,” piped the little parson.
“If that’s meant for sarcasm, Toddles,” said Miss Grace, “you’d better save it for your fielding. It needs it more than I do.”
“Put her down another six,” said Charlie. “She’s serving all the bowling alike. She is in a punishing mood. Toddles, if you’ll take my tip, you’ll go off next over.”
“Don’t take much to flog the stuff you’ve been rolling up this morning, anyhow,” said Miss Grace truculently. “But I’ve been on the point of writing to Stoddy once or twice to tell him that he’s forgotten to invite you, Charlie.”
“Good God, what the, the——!” spluttered the horrified Charlie very incoherently indeed. The bare possibility of such an unheard of proceeding half paralysed the poor bowler. His clerical friend, who had acquired in some mysterious manner a laugh that began in his boots and rose in Rabelaisian moments as high as his knee-joints, nearly tumbled off the coach in wrestling with it.
“I would do it if I thought I would,” said Miss Grace stoutly, and the half-perplexed solemnity of her countenance made three of us howl with joy; the fourth, however, looked as though he would never smile again.
“You needn’t tell us that, we know it,” moaned the poor bowler. “That’s why you’re such a source of comfort to us.”