I am not certain, though, that the best of that holiday was not the waking in a sleeper at 7.30 on a Monday morning at King’s Cross with the knowledge that in an hour’s time I should be at home. I should find, I knew, something between fifty and sixty letters waiting for me, for I have made it a rule never to have correspondence forwarded to me when I go away. There would be certainly something exciting for me in the congregation of a fortnight’s letters. It was the first week in May; the sun was shining out of a blue sky, with all the promise of summer’s splendour. Lord’s and cricket, and long, lazy afternoons reading in a deck-chair in the garden. Once again the newspaper would become interesting. I should find myself buying each successive issue of the _Evening News_ to know if Hearne was still not out at Lord’s. And once again at about three o’clock would steal over me that dissatisfaction with the manuscript that lay unfinished on my desk in front of me. My hand would steal out towards the receiver of the telephone. “Paddington 144. Yes: is that Lord’s? Middlesex batting,--189 for 3. Thank you very much.” And within half an hour I shall be sitting on the sun-baked gallery of the pavilion. They pass so quickly those four golden months, that we are hardly conscious of their passage till the time comes for us to walk, at the close of the last match, wistfully across an emptying ground. For eight months Lord’s will be shut; we shall pass by it on the ’bus, and the white seats of the mound will be empty. A few groundsmen will be pottering about; someone will be rolling the practice pitch. We shall stand up on the ’bus as we go by, for one always does stand up on a ’bus as one passes Lord’s; but no longer shall we crane our necks to read the figures on the telegraph, or peer eagerly to distinguish the players, to see whether it is Hearne or Hendren that is still not out. The season is not over yet, of course; there is still the Scarborough festival, and the champion county has to meet England at the Oval. But these games were, after all, an anti-climax; for the true cricketer the season is at an end when the last ball is bowled at Lord’s.