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Page 4
'Ninety-eight,' said Mike. He always counted his runs.
'By Jove, as near as that? This is something like a finish.'
Mike left the first ball alone, and the second. They were too wide of
the off-stump to be hit at safely. Then he felt a thrill as the third
ball left the bowler's hand. It was a long-hop. He faced square to pull
it.
And at that moment Mr John Bickersdyke walked into his life across the
bowling-screen.
He crossed the bowler's arm just before the ball pitched. Mike lost
sight of it for a fraction of a second, and hit wildly. The next moment
his leg stump was askew; and the Hall had lost the match.
'I'm sorry,' he said to Mr Smith. 'Some silly idiot walked across the
screen just as the ball was bowled.'
'What!' shouted Mr Smith. 'Who was the fool who walked behind the
bowler's arm?' he yelled appealingly to Space.
'Here he comes, whoever he is,' said Mike.
A short, stout man in a straw hat and a flannel suit was walking
towards them. As he came nearer Mike saw that he had a hard, thin-lipped
mouth, half-hidden by a rather ragged moustache, and that behind a pair
of gold spectacles were two pale and slightly protruding eyes, which,
like his mouth, looked hard.
'How are you, Smith,' he said.
'Hullo, Bickersdyke.' There was a slight internal struggle, and then Mr
Smith ceased to be the cricketer and became the host. He chatted
amiably to the new-comer.
'You lost the game, I suppose,' said Mr Bickersdyke.
The cricketer in Mr Smith came to the top again, blended now, however,
with the host. He was annoyed, but restrained in his annoyance.
'I say, Bickersdyke, you know, my dear fellow,' he said complainingly,
'you shouldn't have walked across the screen. You put Jackson off, and
made him get bowled.'
'The screen?'
'That curious white object,' said Mike. 'It is not put up merely as an
ornament. There's a sort of rough idea of giving the batsman a chance
of seeing the ball, as well. It's a great help to him when people come
charging across it just as the bowler bowls.'
Mr Bickersdyke turned a slightly deeper shade of purple, and was about
to reply, when what sporting reporters call 'the veritable ovation'
began.
Quite a large crowd had been watching the game, and they expressed
their approval of Mike's performance.
There is only one thing for a batsman to do on these occasions. Mike
ran into the pavilion, leaving Mr Bickersdyke standing.
2. Mike Hears Bad News
It seemed to Mike, when he got home, that there was a touch of gloom in
the air. His sisters were as glad to see him as ever. There was a good
deal of rejoicing going on among the female Jacksons because Joe had
scored his first double century in first-class cricket. Double
centuries are too common, nowadays, for the papers to take much notice
of them; but, still, it is not everybody who can make them, and the
occasion was one to be marked. Mike had read the news in the evening
paper in the train, and had sent his brother a wire from the station,
congratulating him. He had wondered whether he himself would ever
achieve the feat in first-class cricket. He did not see why he should
not. He looked forward through a long vista of years of county cricket.
He had a birth qualification for the county in which Mr Smith had
settled, and he had played for it once already at the beginning of the
holidays. His _debut_ had not been sensational, but it had been
promising. The fact that two members of the team had made centuries,
and a third seventy odd, had rather eclipsed his own twenty-nine not
out; but it had been a faultless innings, and nearly all the papers had
said that here was yet another Jackson, evidently well up to the family
standard, who was bound to do big things in the future.
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