He hates your modern billiard-table pitch, and a batting of dexterous snickery.  He likes “character” in a game, gigantic hitting forward, bowler-planned leg catches, a cunning obliquity in a wicket that would send the balls mysteriously askew.  But dramatic breaks are now a thing unknown in trade cricket.  One legend of his I doubt; he avers that once at Brighton, in a match between Surrey and Sussex, he saw seven wickets bowled by some such aid in two successive overs.  I have never been able to verify this.  I believe that, as a matter of fact, the thing has never occurred, but he tells it often in a fine crescendo of surprise, and the refrain, “Out HE came.”  His first beginning is a cheerful anecdote of a crew of “young gentlemen” from Cambridge staying at the big house, and a challenge to the rustic talent of “me and Billy Hall,” who “played a bit at that time,” “of me and Billy Hall” winning the pitch and going in first, of a memorable if uncivil stand at the wickets through a long hot afternoon, and a number of young gentlemen from Cambridge painfully discovering local talent by exhaustive fielding in the park, a duty they honourably discharged.

I am fond of my old cricketer, in spite of a certain mendacious and malign element in him.  His yarns of gallant stands and unexpected turns of fortune, of memorable hits and eccentric umpiring, albeit tending sometimes incredibly to his glory, are full of the flavour of days well spent, of bright mornings of play, sunlit sprawlings beside the score tent, warmth, the flavour of bitten grass stems, and the odour of crushed turf.  One seems to hear the clapping hands of village ancients, and their ululations of delight.  One thinks of stone jars with cool drink swishing therein, of shouting victories and memorable defeats, of eleven men in a drag, and tuneful and altogether glorious home-comings by the light of the moon.  His were the Olympian days of the sport, when noble squires were its patrons, and every village a home and nursery of stalwart cricketers, before the epoch of special trains, gate-money, star elevens, and the tumultuous gathering of idle cads to jabber at a game they cannot play.

CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY

This lady wears a blue serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy; she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking people.  I go in terror of her.  Yet the worm will turn at last, and so will the mild, pacific literary man.  Her last outrage was too much even for my patience.  It was committed at Gloucester Road Station the other afternoon.  I was about to get into a train for Wimbledon,—­and there are only two of them to the hour,—­and, so far as I could see, the whole world was at peace with me.  I felt perfectly secure.  The aegis of the pax Britannica—­if you will pardon the expression—­was over me.  For the moment the thought of the lady in the blue serge was quite out of my mind.  I had just bought a newspaper, and had my hand on the carriage door.  The guard was fluttering his flag.