Runs were coming now with exhilarating frequency. The Captain was beginning to score all round the wicket, off anything they liked to send him. There was no more dangerous or resourceful bat in England when once he got his eye in. The Ancient, too, was moving steadily in the direction of his fifty. It would be idle to insist that he had a pleasing style; indeed, he did not appear to have a style of any kind. He had no physique, and you might watch him get a hundred, and then wonder how he’d got them, as he hadn’t a single stroke worthy of the name. But there was no man on the side who got runs with such striking regularity; and when the meteors and comets had appeared and disappeared, this ordinary fixed star was still at the wickets, cocking ’em under his leg for two and sneaking short ones. From time immemorial he had done the same. He had played oftener in Little Clumpton _v._ Hickory than any of the giants of the past, and with such an honourable distinction that the aggregate of his runs greatly excelled that of anybody else. How far back in antiquity the Ancient had first enjoyed his being, history never could determine. In the Little Clumpton _v._ Hickory of twenty years ago, when the Ancient made 64 not out, and pulled the match out of the fire, tradition said that he looked even older than he looked to-day; and his manner was so perennially youthful, too, that it was not until he took his cap off, that one would have guessed he was a patriarch. Men might come and men might go, but he went on for ever. “Hundred and ten up,” called Miss Grace. “How many’s Oldknow got?” the Optimist inquired. “Why, he’s actually got thirty-three!” she said, in a startled tone. “How _has_ he got them? I’m waiting to see him make a decent stroke. But he don’t edge ’em, and he don’t fluke ’em, and he don’t give chances, and he don’t look as though they’ll bowl him in a year. Thirty-three? Isn’t it marvellous? He can’t bat a bit, though, can he?” “Oh no, not a bit,” said I; “at least, that’s what everybody says. No one ever thinks anything of Oldknow’s batting, but if there’s runs to be got Oldknow always considers it his duty to get ’em. For the last ten years his average for Little Clumpton has panned out at forty-six, and since he gets steadily better as his hair gets whiter, by the middle of next century he will have worked it up to something over sixty. He’ll still be going in first wicket down and coming out last but one. He won’t go in first, a place for which Nature certainly designed him, as he abhors ostentation of any kind. That is why he so carefully refrains from making strokes that are at all likely to appeal to the eye of the multitude. There, he’s popped one under his leg for another two.” “Isn’t it perfectly atrocious?” said Miss Grace indignantly. “Why _does_ he do it?”