Second A.B. Look at her!  She’s a speaking to the Grand Old Champion himself!

First A.B. Giving him a bit of her mind, you bet.  What’s that she’s saying?

Second A.B. Why, that she admires his style immensely, and doesn’t want to spoil his game; but that, after the next great All England Match, if not sooner, they mean to have a team of their own and go in for the game all round!

First A.B. Ah, what did I say?

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE POLITICAL LADY-CRICKETERS.

Lady Cricketer. “A TEAM OF OUR OWN?  I SHOULD THINK SO!  IF WE’RE GOOD ENOUGH TO SCOUT FOR YOU, WHY SHOULDN’T WE TAKE A TURN AT THE BAT?”]

* * * * *

CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER.

NO.  X.—­THE DUFFER ON THE TURF.

“A horse for a protection is a deceitful thing,” as the Scotch translator of KING DAVID has it, and I entirely agree with him.  I rather wish to be protected from a horse, than expect any succour from a creature so large, muscular and irrational.  Far from being “courageous,” as his friends say, the horse (I am not speaking of the war-horse) is afraid of almost everything, that is why I am afraid of him.  He is a most nervous animal, and I am a nervous rider.  He is afraid of a bicycle or a wheel-barrow, which do not alarm the most timid bipeds, and when he is afraid he shies, and when he shies I no longer remain.  Irrational he is, or he would not let people ride him, however, I never met a horse that would let me do so.  It is with the horse as an instrument of gambling that I am concerned.  In that sense I have “backed” him, in no other sense to any satisfactory result.  With all his four legs he stumbles more than one does with only a pair, an extraordinary proof of his want of harmony with his environment.

I was beguiled on to the Turf by winning a small family sweepstakes—­L3 in fact.  A sporting cousin told me that I had better “put it on Cauliflower,” who was the favourite for The City and Suburban.  He put it on Cauliflower for me, and we won, so that a career of easy opulence seemed open.  Then I took to backing horses, a brief madness.  I read all the sporting papers, and came to the conclusion that the prophets are naught.  If you look at their vaticinations, you will find that they all select their winners out of the first four favourites.  Anybody could do that.  Now the first four favourites do not by any means always win, and, when they do, how short are the odds you get—­hardly worth mentioning!  Horses occasionally win with odds of forty to one against them, these are the animals of which I was in search, not the hackneyed favourites of the Press and the Public.  This, I think you will find, is usually the attitude of the Duffer, who, in my time, was known, I cannot say why, as the “Juggins.”  I liked to bring a little romance into my speculations.