The boy had flown back.  ’Ninety-two marked, sir; ninety-nine runs; one more for the hundred.’

’Well reckoned; and mind you’re up at Copsley for the return match.—­ And Tom Redworth says, they may bite their thumbs to the bone—­they don’t hurt us.  I tell him, he has no sense of national pride.  He says, we’re not prepared for war:  We never are!  And whose the fault?  Says, we’re a peaceful people, but ’ware who touches us!  He doesn’t feel a kick.—­Oh! clever snick!  Hurrah for the hundred!—­Two-three.  No, don’t force the running, you fools!—­though they ’re wild with the ball:  ha!—­no?—­all right!’ The wicket stood.  Hurrah!

The heat of the noonday sun compelled the ladies to drive on.

‘Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony,’ said Emma.  ’He looks well in flannels.’

‘Yes, he does,’ Diana replied, aware of the reddening despite her having spoken so simply.  ’I think the chief advantage men have over us is in their amusements.’

‘Their recreations.’

‘That is the better word.’  Diana fanned her cheeks and said she was warm.  ’I mean, the permanent advantage.  For you see that age does not affect them.’

‘Tom Redworth is not a patriarch, my dear.’

‘Well, he is what would be called mature.’

’He can’t be more than thirty-two or three; and that, for a man of his constitution, means youth.’

‘Well, I can imagine him a patriarch playing cricket.’

’I should imagine you imagine the possible chances.  He is the father who would play with his boys.’

‘And lock up his girls in the nursery.’  Diana murmured of the extraordinary heat.

Emma begged her to remember her heterodox views of the education for girls.

‘He bats admirably,’ said Diana.  ‘I wish I could bat half as well.’

‘Your batting is with the tongue.’

’Not so good.  And a solid bat, or bludgeon, to defend the poor stumps, is surer.  But there is the difference of cricket:—­when your stumps are down, you are idle, at leisure; not a miserable prisoner.’

‘Supposing all marriages miserable.’

‘To the mind of me,’ said Diana, and observed Emma’s rather saddened eyelids for a proof that schemes to rob her of dear liberty were certainly planned.

They conversed of expeditions to Redworth’s Berkshire mansion, and to The Crossways, untenanted at the moment, as he had informed Emma, who fancied it would please Tony to pass a night in the house she loved; but as he was to be of the party she coldly acquiesced.