“I do that!” cried Jan, and Evan looked round at him. As small boys they had played at least one match together on the ground in question; and Jan still wondered what he would not have given to be in flannels then like Master Evan, instead of in his Sunday shirt and trousers; but Evan was thinking that the school bowler had spoken exactly like the stable lad. “I got up a match there,” he continued, “at the end of last holidays, and I’m going to get up two or three this August. It’s an awful hustle! We play the Pinchington Juniors—awful chaps—but so are some of mine. My best bowler’s learning to drive a hearse. We’ve a new under-gardener who can hit like smoke. I’d have got a lot myself if it had been a decent wicket, but I mean to have one next holiday.” “Does old Crutchy still bowl?” asked Jan, grinning allusively. “Rather! Hobbles up to the wicket, clumps down his crutch and slings ’em in like a demon. He _would_ be jam on a decent pitch! I was going to say, I got 48 one day last summer holidays. It wasn’t against the Juniors—it was a boys’ match at Woodyatt Hall—but I did give 'm stick!” “Well done!” said Jan, quite impressed. “I never made anything like that in my life. You’re playing for your house, aren’t you?” “Rather! I should hope so. I got 19 not out the other day against the United—including two fours to leg off Whitfield _major_.” And so forth with copious details. Whitfield _major_ was the hard hitter of the Eleven, and as bad a fast bowler as ever took an occasional wicket. Jan, who always preferred doing a thing to talking about it, and who wanted to know a lot of things that he did not like to ask, made sundry attempts to change the conversation. He asked after the horses, and was both sorry and embarrassed to gather that the stable had been reduced. He tried Evan’s friends, the Miss Christies, as a safer topic; he had always admired them himself, at the tremendous distance of old days; but this time he called them “the Christies,” and it was Evan who perhaps inadvertently supplied the “Miss” in answering. No; cricket was the only talk. And as they wandered back towards the thin church spire with the golden cock atop, looking rather like an inverted note of exclamation on a sheet of pale blue paper, it was made more and more plain to Jan that he was not to regard himself as the only cricketer. But he had no desire to do so, and nothing could have been heartier than his attitude on the point implied. “You’ll get your colours next year, Evan, and then we’ll be in the same game every day of our lives!” “I have my hopes, I must say; but it’s not so easy to get in as a bat.” “No; you may get a trial and not come off, but a bowler’s bound to if he’s any good. Anyhow you’re in a jolly strong house, and that’s always a help.” “We ought to be in the final this year,” said Evan, thoughtfully. “And so ought we,” said Jan.