“Won’t it look a bit queer, though?” said T. S. M. “A. H. Trentham, broke window, bowled W. G. Grace, three?”
“He shouldn’t be so reckless,” said W. G. severely. “Besides, it won’t look queerer than A. H. Trentham sent the ball on the garden twice. The idea of Rectory rules is to sit on brute force a bit you know, and to prop—to propa—just wait while I look in the book. Yes, here it is, ‘and to encourage the propagation and cultivation of pure science.’”
“Which rendered into modern English means,” said Carteret, who, in his spare time, was a barrister, “that the aim of the Rectory rules is to get the other side out as soon as ever you can, and then keep in yourself until you’ve had enough. That’s about it, Grace, isn’t it?”
“No, James,” said that authority; “it’s just where you’re wrong. ’Cause some people never have had enough. I’ve not for one.”
“She’s as bad as Ranjy for battin’,” said the Harrow captain. “Set’s shillin’s on her sticks, and tempts Biffin to sweat away at ’em till he’s set up heart disease. Dirt mean, I call it. Ought to be half-crowns for a man his years.”
“You’re not likely to give anything heart disease in knocking tips off your sticks, are you, Tommy?” said his sister persuasively.
Harrow liked not this at all. Therefore, when a serious flaw in Gloucestershire’s line of argument occurred to T. S. M., his face lit up with a sudden satisfaction.
“Perhaps Doctor William Gilbert Grace’ll tell us,” said he, dwelling lovingly on every word, “If accordin’ to the blitherin’ rules a fellow’s out every time he breaks a window, why she don’t go out herself every time she breaks the cucumber frame.”
The Harrow captain ended amidst the approving shouts of Middlesex.
“That’s amongst your timber, Willy,” said the Rev. Mr. Elphinstone, executing a pas seul in the middle of the pitch.