'I can always bowl like blazes after lunch,' said the fast man to
Pringle. 'It's the lobster salad that does it, I think.' Four for a
hundred and fifty-seven had changed to seven for a hundred and
fifty-nine in the course of a single over. Gethryn's calculations, if
he had only known, could have done now with a little revision.

Gosling was the next man. He was followed, after a brief innings of
three balls, which realized eight runs, by Baynes. Baynes, though
abstaining from runs himself, helped Pringle to add three to the score,
all in singles, and was then yorked by the slow man, who meanly and
treacherously sent down, without the slightest warning, a very fast one
on the leg stump. Then Reece came in for the last wicket, and the rot
stopped. Reece always went in last for the School, and the School in
consequence always felt that there were possibilities to the very end
of the innings.

The lot of a last-wicket man is somewhat trying. As at any moment his
best innings may be nipped in the bud by the other man getting out, he
generally feels that it is hardly worth while to play himself in before
endeavouring to make runs. He therefore tries to score off every ball,
and thinks himself lucky if he gets half a dozen. Reece, however, took
life more seriously. He had made quite an art of last-wicket batting.
Once, against the Butterflies, he had run up sixty not out, and there
was always the chance that he would do the same again. Today, with
Pringle at the other end, he looked forward to a pleasant hour or two
at the wicket.

No bowler ever looks on the last man quite in the same light as he does
the other ten. He underrates him instinctively. The M.C.C. fast bowler
was a man with an idea. His idea was that he could bowl a slow ball of