"Pip" Part 20

"I have got three in my eye, but I can only choose one."

"I saw the Cambridge Eleven play against the M.C.C.," said Miss Innes, apparently changing the subject.

"Which day?"

"The second. _You_ made sixty-nine, not out."

Mr. Cayley, much gratified, coughed confusedly.

"Oh, that was a fluke," he said. "The difficulty that day was to get wickets."

"There was one Cambridge bowler," continued the girl, "who looked as though he ought to take wickets but didn't."

"Who was that?" inquired the captain, much amused.

"A man with black hair and blue eyes."

Mr. Cayley scratched his nose reflectively. His recollections of the eyes of his team were vague. Their individual shades he had never observed, though he had frequently condemned them collectively.

"Well, really--" he said. "Do you remember anything else about him?"

"He was a medium-paced, left-handed bowler, breaking both ways, with a good deal of swerve as well," said Miss Innes, becoming suddenly and surprisingly technical: "he had a curious oblique run, and he usually bowled about one really fast ball every over."

"Oh--Pip!" said the captain at once.

"That is the name," said the girl; "I remember now, when a catch went to him in the outfield, you called out, 'Run for it, Pip!'"

"That's him," said Cayley. "Yes, he has been disappointing lately. He is a good bowler, too; but somehow he is not taking wickets at present."

"Have you ever tried him round the wicket?" asked Elsie. "With his run he would pa.s.s behind the umpire just before delivering the ball."

The captain was fairly startled this time. He turned and regarded the _ingenue_ beside him with undisguised interest and admiration.

"I say," he remarked, with the air of one who has just made a profound discovery, "you know something about cricket!"

Miss Innes, much to his surprise, blushed like a little schoolboy at the compliment.

"I was brought up to it," she said. "I am a sister of Raven Innes."

Then the captain understood; and he almost fell at her feet, for the name of Raven Innes is honourably known from Lord's to Melbourne.

"Do you play yourself?" he asked.

"A bit. I don't bat quite straight, but I can bowl a little.

Leg-breaks," she added, with a touch of pride.

The captain's appreciative reverie was interrupted by the appearance of a third party--Pip, to wit--who now drifted into view and hovered rather disconsolately in the offing, as if uncertain whether to approach. He was a prey to melancholy, having just completed a final rupture with Madeline Carr, and under the stress of subsequent reaction was anxious to escape home.

"Hallo!" said Cayley. "There's your man, Miss Innes."

Miss Innes glanced in Pip's direction.

"So it is. I can recognise him," she answered, with an air of gratified surprise. "Will you take me to have some strawberries now, please?"

The couple departed, leaving Pip still hove-to on the horizon.

"Rum things, women," mused the captain. "This girl's quite out of the common. I thought at first she must be keen on Pip, or something; but she doesn't seem even to know him. Not often you get a woman taking a purely sporting interest in a man like that!"

Which is nothing but the truth.

Delighted to find a woman possessed of "some sense," Cayley, who was by nature a homely person with bachelor instincts, unbent still further, with the result that the end of a long bout of cricket "shop" with Elsie found him fully convinced--somewhat to his surprise, for he had hitherto been unable to make up his mind on the subject--that Pip was exactly the man he wanted for next Monday.

Elsie finally joined Pip, who was waiting, slightly depressed, to take her away.

"Had a good time?" she inquired brightly, as they walked home.

"Rotten," said Pip.

"Didn't you meet any friends?"

"Yes, a good many 'Varsity men."

"I meant lady friends."

"I haven't got any," said Pip glumly.

"You should speak the truth," said his companion with some acerbity.

"How about Miss Carr?"

Pip glanced at her; and then, moved by an impulse which he did not quite understand at the time, he said, with sudden and unwonted heat,--

"I never wish to set eyes on Miss Carr again."

After this outburst they walked on silently, till they came to a house in Suss.e.x Gardens.

"I live here," said Miss Innes. "Good-bye, and thank you so much for bringing me home."

They shook hands.

"When shall I see you again?" said Pip regretfully.

The girl smiled at his frank seriousness.

"Lord's, on Monday," she said. "Come and see me in the luncheon hour, or before, if Cambridge is batting."

"I say," said Pip gruffly, "aren't you rather taking things for granted?"

"You mean your coming to see me?"