sent out the 4000-ton steam-yacht at the expense of all
the cricketers of the nation. It was on this occasion that the track
was first divided for comers and goers, and that volunteers were set
to prevent stragglers from crossing except by the regular bridges. I
found that I, the President of the Republic, was actually forbidden
to go down in my tricycle to my old friend's house, unless I would
do so before noon. "You'd be run over and made mince-meat of," said
Jack, speaking of such a catastrophe with less horror than I thought
it ought to have engendered in his youthful mind. Poor Sir Lords was
run down by our Jack,--collided as Jack called it. "He hadn't quite
impetus enough on to make the turning sharp as he ought," said Jack,
without the slightest apparent regret at what had occurred. "Another
inch and a half would have saved him. If he can touch a ball from our
steam-bowler when I send it, I shall think more of his arms than I
do of his legs, and more of his eyes than I do of his lungs. What a
fellow to send out! Why, he's thirty, and has been eating soup, they
tell me, all through the journey." These young men had brought a
doctor with them, Dr MacNuffery, to prescribe to them what to eat and
drink at each meal; and the unfortunate baronet whom Jack had nearly
slaughtered, had encountered the ill-will of the entire club because
he had called for mutton-broth when he was sea-sick.

They were to be a month in Britannula before they would begin the
match, so necessary was it that each man should be in the best
possible physical condition. They had brought their Dr MacNuffery,
and our lads immediately found the need of having a doctor of their
own. There was, I think, a little pretence in this, as though Dr
Bobbs had been a long-established officer of the Southern Cross
cricket club, they had not in truth thought of it, and Bobbs was only
appointed the night after MacNuffery's position and duties had been
made known. Bobbs was a young man just getting into practice in
Gladstonopolis, and understood measles, I fancy, better than the
training of athletes. MacNuffery was the most disagreeable man of
the English party, and soon began to turn up his nose at Bobbs. But
Bobbs, I think, got the better of him. "Do you allow coffee to your
club;--coffee?" asked MacNuffery, in a voice mingling ridicule and
reproof with a touch of satire, as he had begun to guess that Bobbs
had not been long attending to his present work. "You'l