Eighty up, boy. Hullo! I see Archie’s beginning to look a bit prickly. Doesn’t suit his book at all. Oh, they’re going to change the bowling at last, are they? Dear me, what intelligence! Who are they putting on? What, Swipes, with his awful stuff! If they really _want_ ’em to get runs why don’t they put on Toddles? What with their fielding, and their judgment, and their general knowledge o’ the game, they’re simply giving this match away. Eighty-two for one; what rot!” Miss Grace’s annoyance was increasing in company with the score. As the sting was extracted from Hickory’s bowling, and it came in for severer punishment, she grew particularly caustic in her criticisms. And the greater her anger, the greater her frankness, till presently she became a real delight to sit and listen to. Before long the Optimist and I were holding our sides for simple mirth. “I don’t wonder at it,” she said; “must be no end of a joke to you to see ’em tossing up this sort of ‘tosh.’ And their fielding, too. Just look at the wicket-keeper; why will he keep snapping ’em, instead of waiting and taking ’em gently, like McGregor? There, that’s Halliday’s fifty; I know he’ll get his hundred. But don’t cheer, please. Look at the luck he’s had. It’s too bad of that wretched Toddles!” Poor Miss Grace was almost tearful when her mind reverted to that catastrophe. There was undoubtedly a rod in pickle for the hapless Elphinstone. “Ninety up. Really this is too bad!” cried she. “Charlie’s going off now; had a pretty long spell, too. But they’ve only got thirty-one off him.” “Fine bowler, isn’t he?” I said, trying to pour oil on the troubled waters; “but he’s had no luck this morning. Grand built chap as well.” “Could do with a bit more head though,” said his censorious sister, who seemed so severe a critic that it struck me that it was a pity the Athenæum did not know about her. She would have given the sprouting novelists and spring poets some talkings-to!