bbed in eleven places!

Roger hurried madly home, and devised an entirely new set of exercises
for his morning drill. A full description of these, however, must be
reserved for another chapter.

(_And so on for ever._)

MERELY PLAYERS

ON THE BAT'S BACK

With the idea of brightening cricket, my friend Twyford has given me a
new bat. I have always felt that, in my own case, it was the inadequacy
of the weapon rather than of the man behind it which accounted for a
certain monotony of low-scoring; with this new bat I hope to prove the
correctness of my theory.

My old bat has always been a trier, but of late it has been manifestly
past its work. Again and again its drive over long-off's head has failed
to carry the bunker at mid-off. More than once it has proved itself an
inch too narrow to ensure that cut-past-third-man-to-the-boundary which
is considered one of the most graceful strokes in my repertoire. Worst
of all, I have found it at moments of crisis (such as the beginning of
the first over) utterly inadequate to deal with the ball which keeps
low. When bowled by such a ball--and I may say that I am never bowled by
any other--I look reproachfully at the bottom of my bat as I walk back
to the pavilion. "Surely," I say to it, "you were much longer than this
when we started out?"

Perhaps it was not magnanimous always to put the blame on my partner for
our accidents together. It would have been more chivalrous to have
shielded him. "No, no," I should have said to my companions as they
received me with sympathetic murmurs of "Bad luck,"--"no, no, you
mustn't think that. It was my own fault. Don't reproach the bat." It
would have been well to have spoken thus; and indeed, when I had had
time to collect myself, I did so speak. But out on the field, in the
first shame of defeat, I had to let the truth come out. That one
reproachful glance at my bat I could not hide.

But there was one habit of my bat's--a weakness of old age, I admit, but
not the less annoying--about which it was my duty to let all the world
know. One's grandfather may have a passion for the gum on the back of
postage-stamps, and one hushes it up; but if he be deaf the visitor must
be warned. My bat had a certain looseness in the shoulder, so that, at
any quick movement of it, it clicked. If I struck the ball well and
truly in the direction of point this defect did not matter; but if the
ball went past me into the hands of the wicket