CHAPTER V.

THE CRICKET-MATCH.

I had been of late so absorbed in the affairs of the Fixed Period,
that I had altogether forgotten the cricket-match and the noble
strangers who were about to come to our shores. Of course I had heard
of it before, and had been informed that Lord Marylebone was to be
our guest. I had probably also been told that Sir Lords Longstop and
Sir Kennington Oval were to be entertained at Little Christchurch.
But when I was reminded of this by Jack a few days later, it had
quite gone out of my head. But I now at once began to recognise the
importance of the occasion, and to see that for the next two months
Crasweller, the college, and the Fixed Period must be banished, if
not from my thoughts, at any rate from my tongue. Better could not be
done in the matter than to have them banished from the tongue of all
the world, as I certainly should not be anxious to have the subject
ventilated within hearing and speaking of the crowd of thoroughly
old-fashioned, prejudiced, aristocratic young Englishmen who were
coming to us. The cricket-match sprang to the front so suddenly, that
Jack seemed to have forgotten all his energy respecting the college,
and to have transferred his entire attention to the various weapons,
offensive and defensive, wherewith the London club was, if possible,
to be beaten. We are never short of money in Britannula; but it
seemed, as I watched the various preparations made for carrying
on two or three days' play at Little Christchurch, that England
must be sending out another army to take another Sebastopol. More
paraphernalia were required to enable these thirty-two lads to
play their game with propriety than would have been needed for the
depositing of half Gladstonopolis. Every man from England had his
attendant to look after his bats and balls, and shoes and greaves;
and it was necessary, of course, that our boys should be equally well
served. Each of them had two bicycles for his own use, and as they
were all constructed with the new double-acting levers, they passed
backwards and forwards along the bicycle track between the city and
Crasweller's house with astonishing rapidity. I used to hear that
the six miles had been done in fifteen minutes. Then there came
a struggle with the English and the Britannulists, as to which
would get the nearest to fourteen minutes; till it seemed that
bicycle-racing and not cricket had been the purpose for which the
English had