What our captain is about to say no one ever hears, for at that moment the ball is delivered, and Ned blocks it dead. There is just time for one ball more, and on that all our hopes depend. It comes, and Ned bangs at it! It's a run! No, it isn't! yes it is! The fielder has missed it. Hurrah! we are equal! Actually they are running another! They won't do it. Up comes the ball to the wicket-keeper, and forward darts Ned's bat over the crease. "How's that, umpire?" cries the wicket-keeper. "Not out!" "Time's up!" Oh, how we cheer! How we rush forward and shoulder Ned home to the tent. Never was such a close shave of a match! Ned himself by no means shares in the general excitement. "Why, what a hurry you fellows were in!" he says. "Look here, George, I'll show you now what I meant about the springs on the pads." Now you will understand what a very aggravating fellow this Ned Easy was; and yet he generally managed to come off best in the end. He generally managed to scrape in at the finish of whatever he undertook. I am certain that if he were a prisoner of war _let_ out on parole, with a pledge to return in one hour or suffer death, he would turn up cool and comfortable on the sixtieth tick of the sixtieth minute of that hour, and look quite surprised at the men who were loading their muskets for his execution. But some day the chances are he will be late in earnest, and then he will have to repent in a hurry of his bad speed. A fellow who is easy-going about his time is generally easy-going about his friends, his money, and his morals. Not that Ned is the sort of fellow to turn out a rascal exactly. He has not the energy, even if he had the inclination. A rascal, to be at all successful, must be brisk, and an observer of times and seasons, and that is altogether out of Ned's line. No; he'll be careless about what he does, and about what people think of him; he will lend a sovereign with as little idea of getting it back as he has of returning the pound he himself had borrowed; he will think nothing of keeping a friend waiting half a day; neither will he take offence if his own good nature is drawn on to an unlimited extent.