“By Jove!” cried the best bowler in England, playing his sister’s wicked, unscrupulous game, “Grace is right. There’s no stars like there used to be in the Guv’nor’s time.”
“Yes, Charlie,” said Miss Grace, “I’m very sorry to say it, but cricket’s going down. Tom Richardson, Johnny Briggs, Arthur Mold, and Charlie Trentham are not fit to tie the boots of George Freeman, Jimmy Shaw, David Buchanan, and ‘The Reverent.’ And the batting too. The Old Man was in his prime in the seventies, Shrewsbury’s getting on, and where are you to find a man with the style of Dicky Daft? and even Toddles can’t cut like old Eph. Lockwood, and Archie can’t lift ’em like Charlie Thornton. Cricket was cricket then. It wasn’t so much like billiards. Batsmen had to face their luck on all sorts o’ pitches, whilst now they get their wickets laid and prepared just like a jolly old foundation stone.”
It may be that the end justified the means. For certain it is that Miss Grace’s parent forgot all about his mutilated garden. The old gentleman sat and beamed. He began to sip his tea and talk of other times.
“Ha!” he sighed, “I envy you young dogs. I should like to have a try at those Australians!”
“Father’s used to curl in the air, you know,” said his daughter to me proudly. “They’re very scarce. There’s no man now that can make ’em do it quite like the Guv’nor—curl one way and break another. ’Fairly gave the batsman fits. If Charlie could only make ’em do it, he’d be the biggest terror that ever was. Don’t you think so, Father?”
“I wouldn’t like to say that,” said the modest old gentleman. Nevertheless there was a tender approval in the eye with which he regarded the very fine fast bowler, who was so busy with his strawberries and cream.
“That’s right, sir,” said that young man quite anxiously; “for you really must not encourage Grace in this curl in the air sort o’ rot, you know. Whenever she gets me to herself, she whips a ball out of her pocket and says, ‘Now then, Charlie, let’s have you at it,’ measures twenty-two yards, and keeps me trying to find out those patent swerves of yours for about two hours at a stretch.”
“Better be doing that than smoking horrible tobacco, or practising the push stroke, or reading for the law in a pink paper that’s got the starting prices in it,” said his sister sternly.
“But I say that the Guv’nor’s leg curl can’t be learnt,” said Charlie. “I say it has to come by nature.”
“Well,” said his sister, “I don’t care, Charlie, how you have it come, whether by nature, Pickford’s, or the Parcel Post. But you’ve got to get it, Charlie. Just think of the value of it to England and Middlesex. Why, they’d be playing you to leg and have their middles telescoped like fun wouldn’t they, Father?”