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But a nice, slow, wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" I came to my point with all vehemence. "Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had run risks enough for his sake as it was!" "How do you know it's for his sake or anybody's?" asked Raffles, quite hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, Garlands or no Garlands?
I always want a wicket-keeper for my bowling." Whereupon I answered: "You want twenty in a row. One's no good." He said: "You don't like standing up to my fast ones, that's the truth." And I responded: "Oh, bless you, I'd stand up to them all right, if I knew where to stand. A wicket-keeper's supposed to keep the wicket, not run all over the ground after wides."
The other day, however, he made a slight error; for, on being appealed to for the most palpable piece of "stumping" ever seen in the cricket field, the ball bouncing back on to the wicket from the wicket-keeper's pads while the batsman was two yards out of his ground, he said, "Not out; it hit the wicket-keeper's pads."
The chief attraction of this gymnastic feat was the unexpectedness of it all. No one knew where the ball would go if it was hit. Once when he timed his shot a little late he caught the ball just as it was passing him and drove it flying past the wicket-keeper's head to where long-stop would have been. The fielding side was always glad to see Bray's back, and it usually did not have to wait long.
Then comes a third, under which I contrive to get my bat and send it flying. "Come!" shouts Steel, and I run. "Another!" he cries; and I run again, and am safe back before the ball returns to the wicket-keeper's hands. Positively I had scored two!
A tawny moustache rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on Teddy in his turn.
"Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men emerged from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light blue. The captain's colours were bleached by service; but the wicket-keeper's were the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male historian I shrink from saying how well they suited him.
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