Next day, sitting near the window, she saw him coming up the road. After the first movement of pleasure at the bare sight of him, she was sorry he had come. Mamma's suspicions awake at last, and here he was again; the third call in one fortnight! She dared not risk an interview with him, ardent and unguarded, under that penetrating eye, which she felt would now be on the watch. She rose hurriedly, said as carelessly as she could, “I am going to the school,” and tying her bonnet on all in a flurry, whipped out at the back-door with her shawl in her hand just as Sarah opened the front door to Alfred. She then shuffled on her shawl, and whisked through the little shrubbery into the open field, and reached a path that led to the school, and so gratified was she at her dexterity in evading her favourite, that she hung her head, and went murmuring, “Cruel, cruel, cruel!” Alfred entered the drawing-room gaily, with a good-sized card and a prepared speech. His was not the visit of a friend, but a functionary; the treasurer of the cricket-ground come to book two of his eighteen to play against the All-England Eleven next month. “As for you, my worthy sir (turning to Edward), I shall just put you down without ceremony. But I must ask leave to book Captain Dodd. Mrs. Dodd, I come at the universal desire of the club; they say it is sure to be a dull match without Captain Dodd. Besides, he is a capital player.” “Mamma, don't you be caught by his chaff,” said Edward, quietly. “Papa is no player at all. Anything more unlike cricket than his way of making runs!” “But he makes them, old fellow; now you and I, at Lord's the other day, played in first-rate form, left shoulder well up, and achieved--with neatness, precision, dexterity, and despatch--the British duck's-egg. _“Misericorde!_ What is that?” inquired Mrs. Dodd. “Why, a round O,” said the other Oxonian, coming to his friend's aid. “And what is that, pray?” Alfred told her “the round O,” which had yielded to “the duck's egg,” and was becoming obsolete, meant the cypher set by the scorer against a player's name who is out without making a run. “I see,” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “The jargon of the day penetrates to your very sports and games. And why British?” “Oh, 'British' is redundant: thrown in by the universities.” “But what does it mean?” “It means nothing. That is the beauty of it. British is inserted in imitation of our idols, the Greeks; they adored redundancy.”