Second A.B. (with candour).  Ah, quite so, of course.  Everyone must have noticed that.  With a demon bowler in front of yer sending ’em down like hundred-tonners, and a blarmed cat of a wicket-keeper on the grab just at your back, not to mention a pouncer at point, it puzzles the best of them to get ’em away, though “in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility,” practising at the nets, to wit, with only the ground-bowler and a few scouts fielding, they may punish ’em properly.

First A.B. Ah, well, one must allow that the Champion plays the game right away all the time.

Second A B. Yea.  Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety.  Wonderful, all the same, what perversely bad hits he will persist in making, at times.  Does things now and again you’d think a school-girl with a bat would be ashamed of.

First A.B. Ah, by the way, what do you think of these here new-fangled Lady-Cricketers?

Second A.B. (significantly).  Ask the Old ’Un what he thinks of ’em.

First A.B. Ah! can’t abide ’em, can he?  And yet he likes the Ladies to look on and applaud, and even to field for him at times.

Second A.B. Yes; the Ladies have been good friends of his, and now he’d bar them from the legitimate game.  I fancy it’s put their backs up a bit, eh?

First A.B. You bet!  And it do seem ray-ther ongrateful like, don’t it now?  Though as fur as that goes I don’t believe Cricket’s a game for the petticoats.

Second A.B. Nor me neither.  But bless yer they gets their foot in in everything now; tennis, and golf, and rowing and cetrer.  And if you let ’em in at all, for your own pleasure, I don’t quite see how you’re going to draw the line arbitrary like just where it suits you, as the Grand Old Slogger seems to fancy.

First A.B. No; and, if you ask me, I say they won’t stand it, even from him. “No,” says they, “fair’s fair,” they says.  “All very well to treat us like volunteer scouts at a country game, or at the nets, returning the balls whilst you slog and show off.  But when we want to put on the gloves and pads, and take a hand at the bat in a businesslike way, you boggle, and hint that it’s degrading, unsexing, and all that stuff.”

Second A.B. Ah, that won’t wash.  If it unsexes ’em to bat, it unsexes ’em to scout.  And if the old cricketing gang didn’t want the Ladies between wickets, why, they shouldn’t have let em into the field, I say.  Strikes me Lady CARLISLE’ll show ’em a thing or two.  That “operative mandatory resolution” of hers means mischief—­after the next big match anyhow.  “Ladies wait, and wait a bit more, wait in truth till the day after to-morrow.”  Yes; but they won’t wait for ever.

First A.B. Not they.  Why, look yonder!  There’s one of ’em in full fig.  Lady-Cricketer from cap to shoes—­short skirt, knickers, belt, blouse, gloves, and all the rest of it.  D’ye think that sort means volunteer scouting only?  Not a bit of it.  Mean playing the game, Sir, and having regular teams of their own.