For a minute the three stood and stared at each other.
"Would you like," Edmund asked in tones of honeyed politeness, "to see me bowl to him? I was just going to when you came."
"Please, sir," said Jane-Anne with commendable alacrity, "I should like it very much."
"Perhaps," Montagu suggested, though not over hopefully, "you'd like to field."
"Field," repeated Jane-Anne; "what's that?"
"Run after the ball when he hits it, and throw it back to me," Edmund explained.
"Oh, I could do that—do let me—it would be lovelly."
"Oh, you shall field as much as you like," Edmund promised graciously, and they all went into the garden.
Jane-Anne took off her hat and cape and hung them on the roller. It was then to be seen that her little nose was very straight and almost in a line with her forehead; no "dint," as Edmund called it, between the eyes. And her hair, parted in the centre from her brow to the nape of her neck, was black, immensely long and thick, and tightly plaited in two big pig-tails, each tied with a crumpled bit of brown ribbon.
Jane-Anne could run very fast and was quite a fair catch, but she could not throw, as Montagu put it, "a hang" except in directions wholly undesirable. She very nearly flung one ball through Mr. Wycherly's study window in her endeavours to send it to Edmund bowling at the other end of the lawn. So it was settled that she must roll the ball along the grass, which she did with fair precision.