John Crang, looking up from his _Times_ and
addressing me, "but I quite agree with what you and your friend are
saying. Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can understand;
it promotes good feeling, and anything that draws closer the bonds of
interest between ourselves and the colonies is an imperial asset."

"Good Lord!" murmured Verinder.

Sir John fortunately did not hear him. "But I agree with you," he
continued, "in condemning this popular craze for cricket _per se_, which
is after all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will not go the
length of our imperial poet and dub its votaries 'flannelled fools.'
That was poetical license, eh? though pardonable under the circumstances.
But, as he has said elsewhere, 'How little they know of England who only
England know.'" (At this point I reached out a foot and trod hard on
Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook--I speak as a pretty wide
traveller--this insular absorption in a mere game is bewildering."

"Infant!" said Verinder suddenly, still under repression of my foot,
"What are you reading?"

The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing himself from his paper, however,
by an effort.

"There's a Johnny here who tells you how Bosanquet bowls with what he
calls his 'over-spin.' He has a whole column about it with figures, just
like Euclid; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet writes just after to say
that the Johnny knows nothing about it."

"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass me the paper. You are within
measurable distance of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come to
a bad end."

Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were intently studying the
diagrams, which Verinder demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a
little huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision of England as she
should be, with her ploughshares beaten into Morris Tubes.

In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked up.

"Let us not despair of cricket," says he. "She has her victories, but as
yet no prizes to be presented with public speeches."

"Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir John, as he took leave of
me on Windsor platform. "Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him: but why
should he object to a man's playing cricket in a pink shirt?"

He went on his way toward the Castle, while we turned our faces for Agar's
Plough and the best game in the world.

JULY.

Our Parliamentary Candidate--or Prospective Candidate, as w