The Secretary was of another kidney. He always got up a bit before the lark, since his rule of life was to get a start of the rest of nature. He was eminently fitted for great place. Had he been other than Secretary to the Little Clumpton Cricket Club he must have been Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and dictated carefully chosen insults to the French and other dwellers in outer darkness. Nevertheless, he was all things to all men. He could be as persuasive as tobacco, he could unloose the wrath of Jove. If you came to him at the eleventh hour and said: “Beastly sorry, Lawson, but can’t possibly play to-morrow,” you could rely on his well of English being defiled. On the other hand, if he came to you and said: “I say, old man, Jordan’s lost his jolly aunt; Boulter’s split his blighted thumb, and I really can’t take no, you know, shall want your batting awful bad, you know,” his accent was a song. He was the only man who could subdue the best bowler when the slips weren’t snapping ’em. He was the only man who dared address the Captain on the field. He had the courage to explain to the fair sex, “what those strange things in white coats with mufflers round their waists are standing there for?” He could suggest to the intelligent foreigner that _the criquette_ is a sport, not a religious exercise; and he was such a fine tactician that he always fielded point. Merryweather, known familiarly as “Jessop,” because of his audacity, was the one person who ventured to tell the Secretary that he couldn’t play to-morrow, “as I’m going golfing.” And even he, lion-hearted as he was, presently gave up that pastime for less violent amusements. “Billiards gone to grass,” the Secretary considered an insufficient phrase, but the Secretary’s views on golf are not going to be printed.