“They’ll have to be regular Sandows before they’ll fill her eye,” said Grace’s brother, “she’s that mighty hypercritical. At least, that’s what a literary Johnny called her. He kept rolling Greek up to her, and comparing her to Nausicaa. She asked him whether Nausicaa was a batsman or a bowler, as she knew for a fact that his name was not in Wisden. But when the silly owl began to simplify himself, he wished he hadn’t spoke. She knocked three fours and two sixes off him—all in one over. By crum! didn’t she make hay! As for Jack Mason, he’s got a blind sort o’ shove behind point off a rising ball that she don’t approve of, whilst Charlie Fry’s bowling action is so darned ugly that I don’t much fancy him.”
“Second bell,” said the little parson. “We’d better cut.”
“Yes, curse it,” said the great bowler with a groan. “’Got to be rolling ’em up all the afternoon at ninety in the shade. Wicket concrete, and two men going as they please. Bowlers have to come from heaven, I say, or they’d simply kick. ’Wants a blooming archangel to be a bowler. Poor devils! What are the sins of their fathers that some men should be born bowlers?”
“Evolution teaches us,” said the little parson with resonant solemnity, “that when a man’s forbears have been for generations in the habit of fielding really bad, dropping catches, slow pick-up, stopping ’em with their boot, wild returns, fumbling, failing to back up, real downright infernal blood-coloured idleness, and so forth—that poor bloke is likely to be born a bowler. Nature will avenge itself, you know.”
“’Must have been several Keys and Martin Hawkes in our family, then, at one time or another,” said Charlie. Here however a ray of hope came to him. “Of course,” said he, “your men’ll declare when they get about three hundred.”
“Well, what would you do,” said I, “if you’d not got a ha’porth o’ bowling, against a batting side like Hickory’s?”
“Cert’nly declare,” said the bowler with wonderful conviction. “Great folly if you don’t. Always the unexpected that happens at cricket, don’t you know. ’Might absolutely scuttle us as our men’ll be tired as the Ten blooming Tribes, and pretty well as sick.”
“Well,” said I, “I daresay we shall declare—at half-past six.”
As the umpires were already out, there was no time left in which the case might be considered in all its aspects. It was a memorable sight when Hickory took the field two minutes later. The assembly was still greater than before. Little Clumpton, always warm favourites, since they relied on purely local men, had had the might of their achievement noised abroad. 165 for one wicket against Hickory’s formidable side was a morning’s work that had sent the majority of those present into the seventh heaven of enthusiasm.
Would Halliday get his hundred? Would Oldknow get his fifty? The cheers that greeted these heroes when they came out of the pavilion was something to cherish in the memory. They marched to the crease with stately unconcern. Their apparent unconsciousness of the clamour they had excited bordered on the sublime.