[Illustration:]

[Illustration:]


"That's a wide!" said Tom, as the ball went rolling by about a yard
from the stump. "Throw it up, Maggie. Now, Hugh, try again!"

It was a very young and inexperienced team that Tom Gardner was
instructing. Tom was staying with his Aunt Gertrude, and had been
complaining to her that he had no one whom he could play cricket with.

"Why don't you play with the children?" asked his aunt at last.

"Play with the kids?" gasped Tom. "Why, auntie, they are all girls
except Hugh, and he not even in knickerbockers! And they don't know
how!"

"Well, can't you teach them?" his aunt asked. Tom looked at her with
some surprise. He was very fond of her and would do much to please
her, but this seemed rather unreasonable.

"I--I have only a bat," he murmured? "there aren't any stumps!"

"O, I'll soon make you some stumps," said the lady briskly. "Come out
into the garden and I'll soon get them."

She was as good as her word. In a few minutes she had found three
sticks, pointed the ends with her pocket-knife, and driven them in
with the gardener's mallet on the lower lawn. A flower-pot was placed