“By Jove,” said I, “very good idea. I’ll suggest it to him.”
The Humourist, known as Merryweather in private life, came out to the Pessimist. Cheers greeted his appearance. The crowd knew him of old. He was the most uncertain bat that ever put on pads. Oh, but if he only stayed! One Gilbert Jessop had to take second place if Merryweather only stayed. True, he only did stay about five times a season, but as no one knew the occasion he was likely to honour with his presence for any lengthened period, the apparition of his six feet three of smiling insolence always sent a thrill through the assembly.
“Bloomin’ ’ard and bloomin’ ’igh and bloomin’ often,” was his game. He was a man who carried few theological ideas, but it was understood that his conception of Paradise was a place of short boundaries and unlimited lob-bowling. He had a partiality for the Park, as it fulfilled the first of these conditions.
“Isn’t this your Slogger?” asked Miss Grace.
“Now that slogging’s at a premium,” said I, “we’d call him a fine, free, forcing batsman.”
“I wish these boundaries weren’t so jolly small,” said Miss Grace with an apprehensive eye. “I don’t like to see a man his inches come in smiling.”
The first ball the Humourist received he sent humming over our coach into a cornfield at the back. During the interval in which Hickory endeavoured to recover it, the remarkable silence of the Optimist attracted my attention. It was so foreign to his usual habit of kind discursiveness that I felt there must be some grave reason for it. He had not uttered a word for forty minutes.
“Brightside, when do you go in?” said I.
“Next but one,” he sighed.
This was a sufficient explanation. The man was suffering. He was determined to be cheerful, but could not disguise the pallor underneath his tan. He drummed his fingers nervously on his knees; a restlessness had taken him; there was a wild look in his eye. Seizing a moment when Miss Grace was occupied in evolving from the analysis the number of runs Charlie had paid for his solitary wicket the Optimist whispered,—