“Confound you! are you going to dislocate your face?” said the Secretary, aiming a cushion and a string of unprintable expressions at the General Nuisance. “What’s up now? Is Charlie crocked? Is Billy drinking? Good Lord! I hope there’s nothing gone wrong with the bowling!” “Not yet,” said the General Nuisance sweetly; “but there will be, I’ll give you _my_ word.” “We shall have to try that muck o’ yours then,” said the Pessimist. “Unfortunately I’m not playing to-morrow; I’m going fishing,” said the General Nuisance affably. “Eh? What?” It was the voice of the Secretary from behind the Captain’s chair. It was a psychological moment. Each man present had that nightmare of a feeling that afflicts you in the long-field when A. H. Trentham lifts one to you steeples high, curling some fifteen ways at once, which all the time you are hopelessly misjudging and that you know you are bound to drop. However, I had the presence of mind to distract the General Nuisance with a drink, while the Captain laid a soothing hand on the Secretary’s knee, and appealed to his moral nature. Brandy and soda, one grieves to say, inflamed rather than appeased the personal appearance of the General Nuisance. His simper became a grin. “Pipe up,” said that heroical man, the Treasurer, preparing for the worst; “out with it.” “You will be very brave?” said the General Nuisance. “Comfort, you blackguard,” said the Secretary, “Why do you grin? Speak or die!” When the General Nuisance grinned, homicidal tendencies soiled minds of the most virgin whiteness. The Captain took his pipe out and tapped it on his boot. It was a command that even the revolutionary spirit of the General Nuisance dared not disregard. It had the authority of an Act of Parliament. “Well, brethren,” said the General Nuisance, “they are bringing Carteret and Elphinstone, that’s all.” “And the Trenthams, too?” said I. “And the Trenthams, too,” said he. “It’s a good job we’re a good team,” said the Humourist. It is true that the Secretary sat behind the Captain’s chair, but in the course of three minutes he contrived to emit such a quantity of language of a free and painful character, that to relieve the tension the Humourist kindly propounded this conundrum. Why is Bobby Abel batting like Lawson’s small talk? Because to look at ’em you’d wonder how they could. This, I regret to say, is quite in the Humourist’s early manner, ere art had chastened nature. It lacks the polished pathos of those slow-drawn agonies at which the world grew pale. But as the Humourist strutted in his title because he took himself quite seriously, do not let us forget that this offspring of his wit was born in an hour of mental stress. CHAPTER II Coming Events AT six next morning my man found me in pyjamas, flourishing a bat up and down a chalk line on the bedroom carpet. “Are you quite sure it’s perfectly straight, William?” “Quite straight, sir; but mind the wardrobe door, sir!”