“Toddles,” said Miss Grace, addressing herself to the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, who was engaged in shinning the Optimist on the off-chance that the Optimist’s mind might be invaded by some much-needed solemnity, “Toddles, your behaviour is positively low. But Charlie, now, don’t you think, as Stoddy must have overlooked you, it would be doing the right thing by him to write and tell him so before it is too late? No good for him to know it, would it, when Sid Gregory and Clem Hill and that lot are knocking the cover off the ball as they did before?”
“Go on, go on,” said the great bowler; “it sounds like sacred music.”
“Well, anyhow,” she continued, “I’m not going to let England lose the rubber this time, if I can help it. And they will, that’s a cert., if you’re not there, Charlie, to rattle their timber. They can play everybody else as easily as they’d play that stuff o’ Toddles’s.”
“Cheek,” said the reverend patentee of “that stuff o’ Toddles’s,” employing the power of speech with evident difficulty, “awful cheek.”
“Always was you know, Toddles, your bowling,” said Miss Grace indulgently. “But we won’t go into that now. What ought I to say to Stoddy when I write him? Would he think it too familiar if I began, ‘My dear Mr. Stoddart,’ or ought it to be ‘Dear Sir’? Don’t quite know how to start it, don’t you know. You see Stoddy’s not exactly an ordinary person, don’t you see. The Guv’nor says great men are so touchy.”
Miss Grace was evidently embarrassed. So were some others. The little parson’s laughter rumbled from his boots until one wondered how his small eights could hold so much. As for the unhappy Charlie, he was so completely demoralised that after saying, “Why don’t some of you men give her another stone-ginger to keep her quiet?” he proceeded to fill an immense tumbler with neat gin for that purpose, under the impression that he was pouring out ginger beer.
When at last things had sorted themselves out a bit, during which process Miss Grace, the innocent cause of this disorder, regarded us all with unaffected gravity, the little parson said, with an expression of really concentrated elfishness: “But you know, you men, there’s a wonderful amount of truth in what Grace says. If Stoddy really has forgotten Charlie, and if she reminds him of the fact, she will be doing a service to her country, won’t she?”
“By Jove, she will,” chorused the Optimist and I.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure I’ll write to Stoddy then,” said Grace.
And she looked as though she meant to do it too.