as not seen again until Bagshaw had won the toss
and decided to go in.

We began our innings with Lambert and Collier, and Bagshaw could not
have chosen a funnier pair. There was some difficulty in getting them
ready, for Collier had left his pads behind, and we had a desperate job
to find any which were large enough to fit him, while Lambert was so
engaged in persuading us that Higgs on a bumping wicket was nothing to
a man who had been asked to play for his county that at one time he had
lost both his bat and his gloves. Before they started Collier insisted
on tossing to see who should have first ball, and when he won Lambert
said it was of no consequence as he had always meant to have the first
ball. The Burtington XI. waited patiently, and threw catches to each
other with extraordinary violence, but although Mr. Plumb had announced
that Higgs would begin the bowling, the terror of the neighbourhood had
not allowed us to see how fast he bowled. There was an air of mystery
about Higgs, which the nine of us who were not at the wickets found
very entertaining, though Dennison, who was in next, looked anxious.

When our batsmen had got to the wickets it seemed as if the game would
never begin, for Lambert took guard three times and looked round the
ground so often to see where the fielders were placed that two or three
of the Burtington men from sheer weariness began to turn somersaults.
Higgs stood with the ball in his hand and talked to Collier, he knew
that he was a great man and was quite unmoved by Lambert's little
tricks. At last there was no excuse for waiting any longer, and the
umpire, after Lambert had refused to have a trial ball, which I suppose
he thought would have been an undignified thing for him to do, called
"Play." The mystery was solved immediately, Higgs bowled very fast
underhand, the kind of ball which is correctly termed a "sneak," but
unfortunately for Lambert the first one was straight and his bat was
still in the air when his middle stump was knocked to the ground. The
Burtington XI. seemed to me to take this beginning as a
matter-of-course, and started throwing catches to each other without
even troubling to applaud Higgs. Lambert walked very slowly from the
wickets, and when he got back to us he was smiling in his most
magnificently contemptuous manner.

"I thought you asked me to play cricket," he said to Bagshaw. "I keep
a special bat for that sort of bowling, and I did not want