“Nineteen from forty-one, quick!” she cried, without looking up. And as I answered, after due thought, “Twenty-three, I mean twenty-four; no, I mean twenty-two,” she lifted her head to say,-- “Thanks so much”; and added, “Hullo! it’s you, is it, Dimmy? Don’t mind me calling you Dimmy, do you? Rather a nice easy, slipping kind of a name is Dimmy, isn’t it, Dimmy? Besides, I can’t always be saying Mr., can I? as though I were a pro.” “If you’ll allow me to call you Grace,” said I, “that’ll be all right.” “You can call me anything you just please,” said she, “as long as it isn’t Laura. I hate Laura.” “I have known some very pretty Lauras,” said I. “Now look here, Dimmy,” said Miss Grace fiercely, “how on earth can I bring the first-class averages up to date if you keep talking? Stanley Jackson’s in a frightful tangle as it is. If you want a book, take it and cut, and close the door quietly.” “Sorry,” said I, “horribly sorry. But may I help you?” “Awfully glad if you would,” said she. “I shall never get done to-night. Oh, hang it! the wire from the Oval’s not here yet. Confound ’em!” Approaching the table, I was now able to observe what her occupation was. She was busily engaged in deducing facts and figures from a litter of telegrams, and transferring them to formidable sheets of foolscap. My look was too perplexed to be ignored. “Rather a good idea,” she explained. “As we can’t get an evening paper in these parts, anyhow, we arrange for ‘the close of the day’s play’ to be wired from the county grounds.” “Why don’t you wait for the morning papers?” I asked. “Morning papers, indeed!” said Miss Grace witheringly. “How do you s’pose I’m going to get to sleep if I don’t know what the boys have done? Why, Archie might have bagged a brace, or Charlie might have got his hundred.” “I didn’t think of that,” I said penitently. “But surely it’s not absolutely necessary for you to work out the averages every night, when by the payment of the ridiculously inadequate sum of one penny you can get trained journalists to do it for you?” “Oh, I like to be knowing,” she said. “It’s not absolutely necessary, of course, but I can’t rest somehow till I’ve got the principal men reckoned up to date. That little beggar Bobby Abel will keep trying to get his nose in front of Archie, and then Albert Ward and Gunn are always treading on his heels. Then Tom Richardson and Briggs are putting in all they know to knock Charlie off his perch. It’s not all jam, I can tell you, having brothers who are such tremendous swells. All the world will keep looking at ’em, and if one of ’em’s a bit below himself, out comes the _Daily Chronicle_ with a picture in five colours of A. H. Trentham’s deplorable exhibition at Old Trafford yesterday, and yarns of that sort. It comes jolly hard on a girl, I can tell you, Dimmy, if you’ve kept ’em on brine baths and a training diet all the week, and then one of ’em goes and blots his copy-book like that.”