“Oh?  I am glad you have begun to take an interest in cricket.  It is simply a social necessity in England.  Why you ever made such a fuss about taking it up, I can’t think.  You used to be so fond of watching baseball and cricket is just the same thing.”

A close observer would have marked a deepening of the look of pain on Mr. Crocker’s face.  Women say this sort of thing carelessly, with no wish to wound:  but that makes it none the less hard to bear.

From the hall outside came faintly the sound of the telephone, then the measured tones of Bayliss answering it.  Mr. Crocker returned to his paper.

Bayliss entered.

“Lady Corstorphine desires to speak to you on the telephone, madam.”

Half-way to the door Mrs. Crocker paused, as if recalling something that had slipped her memory.

“Is Mr. James getting up, Bayliss?”

“I believe not, madam.  I am informed by one of the house-maids who passed his door a short time back that there were no sounds.”

Mrs. Crocker left the room.  Bayliss, preparing to follow her example, was arrested by an exclamation from the table.

“Say!”

His master’s voice.

“Say, Bayliss, come here a minute.  Want to ask you something.”

The butler approached the table.  It seemed to him that his employer was not looking quite himself this morning.  There was something a trifle wild, a little haggard, about his expression.  He had remarked on it earlier in the morning in the Servants’ Hall.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Crocker’s ailment was a perfectly simple one.  He was suffering from one of those acute spasms of home-sickness, which invariably racked him in the earlier Summer months.  Ever since his marriage five years previously and his simultaneous removal from his native land he had been a chronic victim to the complaint.  The symptoms grew less acute in Winter and Spring, but from May onward he suffered severely.

Poets have dealt feelingly with the emotions of practically every variety except one.  They have sung of Ruth, of Israel in bondage, of slaves pining for their native Africa, and of the miner’s dream of home.  But the sorrows of the baseball bug, compelled by fate to live three thousand miles away from the Polo Grounds, have been neglected in song.  Bingley Crocker was such a one, and in Summer his agonies were awful.  He pined away in a country where they said “Well played, sir!” when they meant “’at-a-boy!”

“Bayliss, do you play cricket?”

“I am a little past the age, sir.  In my younger days . . .”

“Do you understand it?”

“Yes, sir.  I frequently spend an afternoon at Lord’s or the Oval when there is a good match.”