three hours. The elevens went in to lunch,
as the crowd poured over the ground, laughing and chattering. This is a
delightful hour to the Rev. Septimus. He will walk to the wickets, and
wait there for his innumerable friends. It will be, "Hullo, Sep!" "By
Jove, here's dear old Sep!" "Sep, you unfriendly beast, why do you never
come to see us?" "Sep, when are you going to send that awful tile of
yours to the British Museum?" And so on.

Twenty men, at least--some of them with names known wherever the Union
Jack waves--will ask the Rev. Sep to lunch with them; but the Rev. Sep
will say, as he has said these thirty years, that he doesn't come to
Lord's to "gorge." A sandwich presently, and a glass of "fizz," if you
please; but time is precious. A tall bishop strolls up--one of the
pillars of the Church, an eloquent preacher, and an autocrat in his
diocese. Most people regard him with awe. The Rev. Sep greets him with a
scandalous slap on the back, and addresses him, the apostolic one,
as--Lamper.[37] And the Lord Bishop of Dudley says, like the others--

"Hullo, Sep! We used to think you a slogger, but you never came anywhere
near that smite of Scaife's."

"I thought his smite was coming too near me," says the Rev. Sep, with a
shrewd glance at the pavilion. "Lamper, old chap, I _am_ glad to see
your 'phiz' again."

And so they stroll off together, mighty prelate and humble country
parson, once again happy Harrow boys.

And now, before Eton goes in, we must climb on to the Trent coach. Fluff
and his brother Cosmo, the Eton bowler, are lunching in other company,
but we shall find Colonel Egerton and the Caterpillar and Warde; so the
Hill slightly outnumbers the Plain, as the duke puts it. Next to the
duchess sits Mrs. Verney. The duke is torn nearly in two between his
desire that Fluff should make runs and that Cosmo, the Etonian, should
take wickets. His Eton sons regard him as a traitor, a "rat," and
Colonel Egerton gravely offers him the corn-flowers out of his coat.

"You can laugh," the duke says seriously, "but when I see what Harrow
has done for Esme, I'm almost sorry"--he looks at his youngest son
(nearly, but not quite, as delicate-looking as Fluff used to be)--"I'm
almost sorry that I didn't send Alastair there also."

Alastair smiles contemptuously. "If you had," he says, "I should have
never spoken to you again. Esme is a forgiving chap, but you've wrecked
his life. At least, that's my opinion."

After