“Now then, Charlie, buck up,” said his sister. “Don’t keep us waiting. We can’t get on with the serious business, the sandwiches and so forth, until you’ve acknowledged the honour that we’ve done you. Now then, let’s see you do the thing in style. Like you used to do it at the Union, you know. What price, old Charlie, at the Union?” “Oh, this is all beastly bally rot,” exclaimed the great bowler most miserably red. “Dimsdale, if you don’t stop grinning, you’ll be sorry. Grace, I’ll get level with _you_, take _my_ word. I’ll drop every bally catch that comes, and talk about misfielding and the overthrows--I’ll give _you_ beans!” Miss Grace, in her capacity as president of the feast, hammered the hamper top with an empty stone-ginger beer bottle in a very resolute manner, and said: “Now then, Charlie, are you going to buck up and begin? Something in the Earl’s style, don’t you know. ‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ sort of thing. You know, something with a bit of class about it, and not so much of your awfully beastly bally. Not good form at all you know, Charlie. Quite third rate, don’t you know. Now then, I’ve given you a friendly lead. Let’s see you stand up like a man, and say, ‘Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am----’ Well, why don’t you go on?” “Just you shut your face, Grace, and pass me a ham sandwich, and let’s have the mustard this way. You’d better drop your rotting, Grace, it really isn’t funny,” said the poor bowler wriggling dismally. “_You’re_ pretty humorous though,” said his sister cruelly. “If you’ll be good enough to look as funny as that till I find my kodak. I’ll take a snapshot of you. You would send up the circulation of the _Windsor Magazine_. ‘Eminent cricketer replying to the toast of his health.’ What, ho!” If a wasp had not settled itself on the dazzling white collar of poor Charlie’s persecutor and demanded extremely discreet conduct on the part of Miss Grace whilst three men gallantly but cautiously arranged its capture and decease, it is possible that the great bowler’s bad time would have continued longer than it did. Miss Grace Trentham, having rather severely handled a famous exponent of the game, turned her attention to one of even greater eminence. Stoddart’s blindness in omitting to ask Charlie to make the trip to Australia was trenchantly reviewed. “If Stoddy don’t take Charlie,” Miss Grace said with weighty deliberation, “Stoddy’ll be wrong. Charlie’s worth three Jack Hearnes this season, and Mold and Richardson aren’t in it. ’Fact it’s my ’pinion that if Charlie had only got a bit more intellect, and hadn’t such a gift for drinking things, he’d be another Spoff.” “Go on, Grace, keep at it,” murmured the gentleman in question with a most pathetic air of resignation. “That’s the fizz. Girls and champagne as usual. To watch the fluent way they lip it, you’d think it was only milk. But it gets there just the same. Go on, Grace; let’s hear what else it’s got to say.”