“They know they’ve got to field when they play for Hickory,” said Miss Grace sternly. “They know better than to get slack. A man who won’t field oughtn’t to be allowed to play. Every man can field if he tries. Even poor old George has to buck up when he plays for Hickory. He knows that I simply won’t have it. He daren’t funk a single one; and he has to get down to ’em with both hands, rheumatism or no rheumatism. I’ll have none of his Artillery tricks. Gave him an hour’s practice this morning before we started, and by the time he’s been here a month he’ll be quite a reformed character. Look, he’s positively energetic. Did you see his smart return. He knows I’m watching him. Well fielded, George!” As her clear voice rang out, the face of every one of the eleven fielders lit up with a smile. “That seems to please them,” said I slyly. “I suppose you must be very chary with praise.” “I have to be,” she said. “They take an awful lot of bringing to the scratch. George says I’m a regular martinet; and my young brother Tom says I’m a confounded nuisance. But that’s his cheek, of course; he’s an unlicked cub, don’t you see; he’s got to go through the mill yet. Do you know, Cheery [this apparently was a name of her own for the Optimist], that I can’t stand these schoolboys at all. My young brother Tom had quite a nice little way of bringing two or three of the Harrow eleven, and one or two other men of light and leading from the other schools, down to the Vicarage. Talk about ‘side,’ I never saw anything like it. They wanted a Wisden all to themselves; and to hear ’em talk you’d have thought that Stoddy meant taking ’em all out with him in the autumn. They thought Archie’s batting was ‘not so bad,’ and Charlie’s bowling ‘rather decent’; but what a pity it was that I hadn’t seen Comery of Eton, and Prospect of Charterhouse. And they wouldn’t have a few on our lawn because they thought it a bad thing for their style. Style, indeed! their style consists in jolly well going forward to every jolly thing. And they didn’t bowl ’cause it was too much fag; and there wasn’t much fun in fielding. I told my old guv’nor pretty straight that they’d have to clear out; and they had to. And now I absolutely refuse to have ’em. No more Harrow boys if I know it. One has to draw the line somewhere, hasn’t one? Not that my young brother Tom is half a bad sort, really. Of course his side is something dazzling; but when he’s been from school for about a week it begins to get some o’ the gilt chipped off it. Don’t _quite_ do, don’t you know. Some of those other fellows’ sisters think it just beautiful and admire it ever so. I don’t. But I’m gradually getting my young brother Tom to forget himself a bit. He don’t spread himself now anything like he used to. I think we shall lick him into shape, and make a county cricketer of him after all. But he’ll have to roll up a different sort o’ length to that. ’Nother boundary. Halliday only wants two more for his fifty.