Mr. Sapworth introduced me to the crowd en masse. Several persons touched their caps to me; others nodded their heads; some grinned.
"Good-morning, gentlemen. We're going to have a fine day for our match. Our team all here?"
Mr. Sapworth took upon himself to answer; he had been searching about him with his eyes.
"They're here all right. I suppose those Latchmere chaps ain't come yet?"
They had not come, and they did not come for an hour or more. I employed the interval in becoming acquainted with the individual members, arranging the order of going in, and their positions in the field; matters in appearance simple enough, but more difficult in practice. But at last the preliminaries were settled somehow, and the Latchmere men appeared upon the ground.
Their captain, coming up, was introduced to me. I was informed afterwards that he was a blacksmith. I thought he was by the way in which he grasped my hand. His opening speech was a little surprising.
"We ain't going to play you if you've got eleven men, you know."
I inquired into his meaning.
"We've only got ten," he said. "And one of them's Soft Sawney, and another's Sprouts."
I do not know if those were the correct names of the gentlemen referred to, or only fancy ones by which they were known to their friends; but he laid his hand on two of his followers and hauled them to the front. One was a long, weedy youth, who, one saw at a glance, was more than half an imbecile; and the other was a portly old gentleman of fifty-five or six, with a corporation like a barrel.