The only suggestion Ted had to make was that I should go to the match, contrive to sit next to Miss Nell, and—what, he didn’t say; a delicate reserve I admired.
“You’re a good chap, you know, Butterfield,” he added. “I’ve told lots of our fellows what a good chap you are. Harrop major says so too—he met you once, you know, Butterfield.”
I fear I had forgotten Harrop major in the multiplicity of my affairs, but I was properly touched. I smiled at my own goodness.
“Well, thanks awfully, Butterfield”—he rose to go—“it’s awfully good of you really. You’re a brick.”
“Thanks, Ted,” I returned. “I hope you’ll come off all right in the match.”
His lips twitched queerly; I forbore to press the alternative contingency, and he took his leave.
My duty, apparently, was to keep an eye on Miss Nell, to diagnose her condition when Ted went in to bat, to mark how, as should befall, his success or failure was received, and to exercise a discretionary supervision over the state of her heart as revealed by the vicissitudes of the game. It was doubtful of what precise use I should be, but—it was interesting, and Ted was a pleasant-mannered youth.
It was peculiarly interesting in view of the fact that the Carmichaels were a cricketing family. Now the purely abstract part of the game was a cult to which I had never aspired, my only interest being in such personal cases as that of my young friend Ted. I was convinced that the progress of Carmichael senior’s love, if it had had a progress, was accelerated by the fact that he had, in his Eton match, made fifty on a wet wicket; and the question whether a similar performance on the son’s part would please Nellie, or whether Nellie would be merely pleased to see Ted pleased with himself, was a speculation which I followed into the nicer nuances.
Our party accounted for a considerable segment of bench space, the apex of which, I contrived it, consisted of Miss Nell and myself. We were backed by tiers of Carmichaels, Chattertons, and Bassishaws, and penetrated wedge-wise into half a division of Eton younglings, with close-cropped hair and large ears, which looked frank admiration at Nellie. One keeper of the public manners with freckles and an even greater extent of white collar than the rest cuffed his neighbour for saying that she was stunning. Nellie heard and laughed. She sat provokingly upright, and shot enfilading glances to left and right beneath the brim of a hat remarkably adapted to such proceedings. A pretty, slim thing she was, and the careless white flash between her lips unsettled Ted considerably, who was paying uneasy flying visits.
“I think the Harrow boys look nicer,” she said, with a look of illicit pleasure from the shade of that eminently suitable hat; and Ted left with ill-feigned unconcern. I remembered my mission, and leaned towards her.