nd a few wides, I hope; Robarts says there is too
great a sameness about my bowling, so I want to practise twisters and
shooters. You won't mind if I bowl at your legs?"

"Not a bit; _ignis via_--fire away."

The necessity for violent exertion had been taken out of Buller, indeed
it was now oozing away from every pore of his skin. So he did not try
fast bowling, except now and then when he attempted to put in a shooter,
but concentrated his attention principally upon placing his ball, or on
pitching it to leg with an inward twist towards the wicket. He
constantly failed; sent easy ones which were hit about to the peril of
neighbouring players; cut Penryhn over once on the knee-cap and once on
the ankle. But he never once delivered the ball carelessly, or without
a definite object. And when his arm got so tired that his mind could no
longer direct it, he left off and Penryhn bowled in turn to him, his
great object then being to keep an upright bat rather than to hit.

"I'll tell you what, Tom, you have improved in your cricket awfully,"
said Penryhn as they strolled back in the dusk. "Why, you took Robarts'
wickets twice."

"Yes, but I should not have done it in a game; fellows step out and hit
recklessly in practice."

"No matter for that; you are quite a different bowler from what you
were."

"The fact is it takes me all my time to learn to do what comes to other
fellows naturally."

"That's a bit too deep for me; some fellows can do one thing easily and
others another, and every fellow has to work hard to learn those things
which belong, as it were, to the other fellows. There are chaps, I
suppose, like the Admirable Crichton, who are born good all round, and
can play the fiddle, polish off Euclid, ride, shoot, lick anyone at any
game, all without the slightest trouble, but one does not come across
them often, thank goodness. I say, do you know what genius is?"

"Not exactly; that is, I could not define it."

"Well, I have heard my father say that some very clever chap has said
that it is `an infinite capacity for taking pains,' and if that's true,
by Jove, you must be a genius, Tom!"

And they both burst out laughing at the notion, and went in and changed
their flannels. And Buller lit his candle and mugged at a German
exercise till the supper-bell rang.

Half-holidays did not necessarily preclude work in the tutor's pupil-
rooms, which was preparatory to that in school, though practically the