“I’m clean bowled by this blessed proposition,” said he. “Here have I been slogging away at it all the evening and never got my bat properly under it yet. You might give us a leg-up, Dig.”
“Bless you,” said Dig, “I’m no good at that sort of yorker. I’m bad enough stumped as it is by this Horace. He gets an awful screw on now and then, and just when you think you’ve scored off him, there you are in among the slips, caught out low down. I vote we go and ask Marky.”
“Don’t like it,” said Arthur. “Marky served us scurvily over poor old Smiley, and I don’t mean to go over his popping-crease, if I can help it, any more.”
“That was an underhand twist altogether,” said Dig. “Bad enough for Ainger to bowl us out, without him giving it out, too, the way he did. You know, I really think we ought to tell him what a nice way we can stump him out if we like. He just thinks we’ve caved in and put off our pads.”
“I don’t like it, Dig. It would be an awfully bad swipe, and Daisy would be knocked over as much as he would. We’re not forced to play up to him any more; but I don’t like running him out.”
“You’re a jolly decent brother-in-law, you are,” said Dig admiringly, “and it’s a pity Marky don’t know what he owes you.”
At this point Tilbury burst into the room. If Dig and Arthur were a little crazed about cricket, Tilbury was positively off his head.
“How’s that, umpires?” cried he, as he entered. “Did you see me playing this afternoon? Went in second man, with Wake and Sherriff bowling, my boys. I knocked up thirty-two off my own bat, and would have been not out, only Mills saw where I placed my smacks in between the two legs, and slipped up and got hold of me low down with his left.”
“All right,” said Arthur. “Why don’t you put on side? I was watching you, and saw you give three awfully bad chances in your first over. Never mind, stick to it, and we’ll make a tidy player of you some day. I hear they’re going to get up a third eleven. I dare say Ainger will stick you in it if we ask him.”
Tilbury laughed good-humouredly; for it was all on the cards that he might get a place in the first eleven before very long.