ly.

"All right! There's to be a match on Saturday, and I'll ask Miss Latimer
to let you be in it. It's a scratch team from the Lower School against
prefects and monitresses. I've no doubt we shall be badly beaten, but it
really doesn't matter. It's only for practice."

"Do the prefects play well?"

"I should think so! They're very keen on it. Dora Stephenson reads up
Ranjitsinhji, and Meta Hall goes to all the county matches when she can
get the chance. You'll have to play up, Patty, if we want to make any
score at all."

"Don't expect too much," said Patty. "I might send a catch first thing.
I've played at home with Basil, but I don't know how I shall get on
here."

At Enid's special request, Miss Latimer included Patty in the scratch
team for the following Saturday afternoon, so that she might be able to
show her capabilities and give her companions an opportunity of judging
whether she might be considered fit for a place in the Lower School
eleven. The prefects went in first, and the mistress, who had a keen eye
for the future possibilities of her pupils, noticed with approval that
Patty was not fielding like a novice, that she caught her ball neatly in
her hands, instead of stopping it with her skirts, and threw it up
promptly with an accuracy of aim not always common among girl players.
Wishing to test her further, Miss Latimer called to her at the next
over, and told her to take her turn at bowling. It was Dora Stephenson's
innings, and the Lower School knew that a struggle was in store. Dora's
record scores were well known, and it often seemed almost impossible to
put her out. Patty walked up, quaking at the prospect of her encounter.

"Oh, Miss Latimer!" said Beatrice Wynne. "Are you sending in Patty to
bowl now? It's rather hard on our side, isn't it?"

"I know what I am about, Beatrice," replied the teacher. "Go on, Patty,
and don't be nervous. Let us all see what you can do."

Patty's first ball showed a science that made her companions open their
eyes wide. It was a curious way of bowling, half under, half over arm,
such as none of the girls had seen before, and which seemed to prove
most baffling. For three balls Dora merely slogged; the fourth, to her
extreme surprise, got her out.

"A duck! A duck!" cried the opposite side, in raptures of delight. To
have taken her wicket in the first "over" was a success such as they had
never expected, and a triumph for the Lower School not to be forgotten
i