Miss Grace was now returning. We saw the assured figure of that young person, the perfection of finely curved and elegant strength, emerge from the interior of the ladies’ tent. Two _very_ young men stepped out after her. Miss Grace turned round quickly, and although what she said was brief, it was apparently to the point, as the pair of them went back again without any delay whatever. As Miss Grace came along the confines of the boundary to rejoin us, swinging her gloves as she walked, an act of self-denial denoted that here was no ordinary girl. The bowler was in the act of delivering, and she was compelled to cross the screen at his end. The ordinary girl would have been quite unable to resist the fascination of passing behind the bowler’s arm, and thereby delaying the game until she had gone on her way rejoicing in her crime. Miss Grace, however impossible it may actually seem, waited while the bowler delivered the ball, and afterwards ran across the screen as hard as she could in order to be well clear of his arm by the time he was ready to send down the next. The Optimist saw this also, and is prepared, I understand, to affirm it on oath in the presence of witnesses. And the pair of us will no doubt one day persuade the authorities at Newnham to recognise the pious character of her act by erecting a stained glass window to her honourable memory, even at the risk of causing that home of the higher learning to build a chapel in which to put it. She was soon up beside us again, a pretty healthy-looking anger seeming to emphasise her charms. “267 for one, Grace,” said the scorer; “Halliday not out, 169. Oldknow, not out, 72. Oh, and another four; that makes Halliday 173. 270 up, boy.” “Awfully obliged to you, old chap,” said Miss Grace politely, as she took the score-book from the Optimist. Her self-control really was remarkable, but then women do claim to have more of it than men. “What sort of a time did they give you in there?” asked the Optimist. He always had a considerable temerity of his own. A thorough-going optimist needs it, of course. “Pretty bad,” said Miss Grace, with a distinctly blasé air. “One girl said that Charlie must have an awful lot of enthusiasm, ’cause he kept running about as hard as he could just for fun, while everybody else was looking at him. Oh, some of ’em have a very pretty wit, I can tell you. But if Hickory’s idea of humour is 271 for one, I wish they’d try to be a bit serious sometimes, ’cause in my idea that sort o’ fun’s not funny at all.” “’Tis for us, I think,” said I. “Very low form of amusement,” said Grace judicially. Here the game afforded us a new diversion. The dauntless Halliday, whom good fortune had now rendered absolutely reckless, lashed out for all he was worth at a ball much too short to drive. It went spinning up a dizzy height midway between mid-off and cover-point, in which positions the youthful T. S. M. and Carteret were fielding respectively.