“Well,” said Robarts when he was called away to go and field, “and you are the fellow they called a duffer! Why, it is like magic! Were you playing dark last year, or what?”
“No; but I have been practising.”
“You have practised to some purpose, then. If you could only vary your bowling a little more you would be very dangerous. You see, if you always send the same sort of ball, a fellow knows how to meet it after a bit.”
Robarts as an all-round player was only reckoned inferior to Crawley, and his words of approval were very gratifying to Buller, who felt himself a step nearer one particular goal. He did not indulge in daydreams, however, not being of an imaginative disposition. The actual difficulty which he had to master at the time took up all his thoughts and energies, and the distant object to be attained, though never absolutely lost sight of, was never dwelt upon or brooded over.
He at once looked about for someone else to bowl for, and found his particular chum, Penryhn, who, after fagging out through the heat of the day, had gone to the wicket with the sun in his eyes, and been clean bowled the first ball.
“Will you really bowl for me?” he said eagerly in reply to Buller’s offer. “What a good fellow you are!”
“Why? for doing what I want? That is laying in a stock of good works cheap. You won’t mind a few wides, I hope; Robarts says there is too great a sameness about my bowling, so I want to practise twisters and shooters. You won’t mind if I bowl at your legs?”
“Not a bit; ignis via—fire away.”
The necessity for violent exertion had been taken out of Buller, indeed it was now oozing away from every pore of his skin. So he did not try fast bowling, except now and then when he attempted to put in a shooter, but concentrated his attention principally upon placing his ball, or on pitching it to leg with an inward twist towards the wicket. He constantly failed; sent easy ones which were hit about to the peril of neighbouring players; cut Penryhn over once on the knee-cap and once on the ankle. But he never once delivered the ball carelessly, or without a definite object. And when his arm got so tired that his mind could no longer direct it, he left off and Penryhn bowled in turn to him, his great object then being to keep an upright bat rather than to hit.
“I’ll tell you what, Tom, you have improved in your cricket awfully,” said Penryhn as they strolled back in the dusk. “Why, you took Robarts’ wickets twice.”