“One lump or two, Cheery?” said the brisk Grace. “And Tommy’s playing against Kent on Monday. Isn’t it scrumptious! Toddles, send the cream along, will you when you’ve taken your blazer out of it? But isn’t it prime about Tommy?” “Your fist, old man!” demanded the Optimist. He wrung T. S. M.’s hand in such a way that it was lucky it was not his bowling arm. The Optimist, best of good fellows as he was, might have sought for years to find the highway into Miss Grace’s heart, and yet not have so nearly found it as he did just then. For his behaviour clearly said, that if he was not in his own person a great cricketer, none the less he had a true feeling for the game. As the champion county had made a moderate score, and Gloucestershire felt that they therefore could afford to be generous, Brightside was allowed to bat for Middlesex. Unfortunately, his efforts in the batting line were of very little service to his side. When the poor chap took his guard, and then looked up and saw Miss Grace preparing to deliver, he couldn’t have been in a greater funk had she been Spofforth himself. One ball transacted his business. It had the paternal curl, and also “did a bit” as well. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said the tender-hearted bowler, as the poor Optimist’s wicket shed a silent bail; “but it was a good ’un, wasn’t it? The Old Man’s analysis is three wickets for fourteen. Not so dusty, is it, for a veteran?” “Are you counting that broken window a wicket?” asked the victim of Law Seven, Rectory Rules. “What do _you_ think?” said W. G. “If I chuck you a ’tice, and it leads you to take liberties, what do you think, Archie?” “Why, I think your cheek’s increasing,” said the emphatic Archie. Grace went in first for Gloucestershire, of course. “One leg, Biffin, if you please,” said she, bending her brown face over her bat handle. “Toddles, will you have the goodness to come from behind the bowler’s arm? Oh, and Biffin, you must not forget that according to Rule Nine anything above medium is a no-ball. Fast bowling’s dangerous here, you know, tempts one to hit so hard. Do you hear that, Charlie?--nothing above medium.” The best bowler in England was cruel enough to drop in one of his celebrated “yorkers” to his sister first ball. Even with the most accomplished defensive batswomen a yorker is always liable to have a fatal termination. It had in this instance. Crash went Miss Grace’s middle. “No-ball!” yelled the umpire, just in the nick of time. “Got that no-ball down to Gloucester, Father?” cried the imperturbable Grace to her parent who sat scoring under a willow tree, a safe distance away. “Oh, and Biffin, I think I’d better have two leg, I was bit inside that one, wasn’t I?” The way in which she lifted a bail and scraped the crease was W.G. to the manner born. “And, Toddles, _can’t_ you keep from dancing behind the bowler’s arm?”