without their host when they tackled the Little
Peddlingtonians, as you will see.

We fellows who formed the Little Peddlington Cricket Club were for the
most part studying there under a noted tutor, who prepared us for the
army, Woolwich, or India; but we admitted a few of the townspeople.

A cricket match at such a retired spot opened a field of excitement to
both residents and summer tourists alike. Even an ordinary contest,
such as we sometimes indulged in with the Hammerton or Smithwick clubs,
or the Bognor garrison, would have aroused considerable interest in the
vicinity of Little Peddlington; but when it became known that we were
going to play the celebrated Piccadilly Inimitables, who had licked
Lancashire and Yorkshire, and almost every county eleven they had met in
their cricketing tour from the north to the south of England, there was
nothing else talked about from one end of our seaside town to the other,
the news spreading to the adjacent hamlets, and villages beyond, until
it reached the cathedral city twenty miles away.

Under these circumstances it cannot be wondered at that when Monday, the
opening day of the match--which turned out beautifully fine for a
wonder, as it always rained on the very slightest provocation at Little
Peddlington--arrived, there was such a crowd of carriages and drags,
filled to their utmost capacity, as to astonish even the memory of that
far-famed individual "the oldest inhabitant." These were drawn up in a
sort of semicircle around our cricket ground--a charmingly situated spot
with a very wide area, and nicely sheltered by rows of waving elms from
the hot August sun--and besides the "carriage folk," as the rustics
termed them, came on foot everybody in the neighbourhood, besides all
Little Peddlington itself.

The Piccadilly Inimitables arrived early in the morning, having stopped
overnight at Brighton, where they had scored their last victory over the
Sussex eleven, and which place was not so remote from Little Peddlington
as you might suppose, consequently we were able to commence the match in
good time, and as our club won the toss for first innings we buckled to
at once for the fray, sending in John Hardy, who had the reputation with
us of being a "sticker," and the grumbling Charley Bates, to the wickets
punctually at eleven o'clock.

The bowling at the beginning was rather shady, the Inimitables not being
accustomed to the ground, which our batsmen, of course,