he
committee of the visitors' cricket club, requesting them to furnish the
assistance of the three members whom our captain had specified, to the
Little Peddlington Eleven, which would be also duly recruited from the
ranks of its junior team, not forgetting young James Black, in order to
enable them to challenge the Piccadilly Inimitables, and try to stop
their triumphal progress round the south coast.

Charley Bates objected, naturally, as might have been imagined from the
position he took at first. He objected not only to the visitors being
asked to join our scratch team and represent the Little Peddlingtonians,
but also specially--just because John Hardy mentioned his name, and for
no other earthly reason--to the fact of young Black's being selected
from the junior eleven. He was over-ruled, however, on both points,
much to his chagrin, as he was in the habit generally of getting his own
way by bullying the rest, and he left the meeting in the greatest
disgust, saying that he wouldn't play, and thus "make himself a party to
the disgrace that was looming over the club," in their defeat by the
Inimitables, which he confidently expected.

"He's too fond of figuring in public to care to take a back seat when we
are all in it, and bite off his nose to spite his face!" said Tom Atkins
when he went away from us in his dudgeon, shaking off the dust from his
cricketing shoes, so to speak, in testimony against us. "Master Charley
will come round and join us when he sees we are in for the match, you
bet!"

And so he did, at the last moment. The other members having cordially
supported the captain's several propositions, they were carried
unanimously by our quorum of four, and immediately acted upon. Young
Black, with two other juniors, and three of the best men we could pick
out from the visitors that were at Little Peddlington for the season
that year--and there were some first-rate cricketers, too, amongst
them--made up our scratch eleven, Charley Bates relenting when he found
that we would have played without him. And a challenge having been sent
to the Piccadilly Inimitables without delay, which they as promptly
accepted, the match was fixed to come off, on our ground, of course, on
the opening days of the ensuing week--provided, as the secretary of our
opponents' club, very offensively as we thought, added in a postscript
to his communication, the contest was not settled on the first day's
play. But they reckoned