the meal, because personally I like savouries best, and naturally I prefer my own chapter to any other—parenthetically, I have not seen any of the rest, except the one which I had a share in writing. No one has perhaps played more country-house cricket than I have, and certainly no one has derived more enjoyment from the matches. So I can write with agreeable memories. But as the games are the least formal in the whole range of cricket, therefore I feel this chapter needs no apology for being a trifle desultory. We are now taking our ease after dinner, and chatting in quite a happy-go-lucky way.
"What good times I have had in country-house cricket, to be sure," ought to be the observation of any one who has had much to do with such games. If not, there has been something wrong with the individual. So he is not you, gentle reader, and, if that is the test, most certainly he is not me.
All the same, I have not enjoyed the prime of country-house cricket. That must be a tradition among my seniors. Don't you know the type of jolly old buffer, aged anything between fifty-five and seventy, with a big voice, bigger presence, and cheery disposition, when the gout does not give him a twinge, who lights a cigar, pulls down his shirt-cuffs, and has a twinkle in his eye at the very mention of country-house cricket?
Men of this type made country-house cricket a thing of gorgeous merriment. Possibly at college they had paid more attention to May Week than to Plato, and to Eights Week than to Smalls. But
