Evident preparations had been made either that morning or the previous night for a grand match; a large number of sods of turf had been taken up and hastily replaced on that portion of the wicket where the ball is supposed to pitch when it leaves the bowler’s hand.  There had been no rain for a month, but just where the stumps were stuck a bucket or two of water had been dashed hastily on to the arid soil; while, to crown all, a chain or rib roller—­a ghastly instrument used by agriculturists for scrunching up the lumps and bumps on the ploughed fields, and pulverising the soil—­had been used with such effect that the surface of the pitch to the depth of about an inch had been reduced to dust.

In spite of this we all enjoyed ourselves immensely.  Delightful old-fashioned people, both farmers and labourers, were playing against us; quaint (I use the word in its true sense) and simple folk, who looked as if they had been dug up with the other Saxon and Roman antiquities for which Edgeworth is so famous.

I was quite certain that the man who bowled me out was a direct descendant of Julius Caesar.  He delivered the ball underhand at a rapid rate.  It came twisting along, now to the right, now to the left; seemed to disappear beneath the surface of the soil, then suddenly came in sight again, shooting past the block.  Eventually they told me it removed the left bail, and struck the wicket-keeper a fearful blow on the chest.  It was generally agreed that such a ball had never been bowled before.  “’Twas a pretty ball!” as Tom Peregrine pronounced it, standing umpire in an enormous wideawake hat and a white coat reaching down to his knees, and smoking a bad cigar.  “A very pretty ball,” said my fellow batsman at the other wicket “A d—­d pretty ball,” I reiterated sotto voce, as I beat a retreat towards the flag in the corner of the field, which served as a pavilion.

When I went on to bowl left-handed “donkey-drops,” Tom Peregrine (my own servant, if you please) was very nearly no-balling me.  “For,” said he, “I ’ate that drabby-handed business; it looks so awkid.  Muddling work, I calls it.”  But I am anticipating.

As I prepared myself for the fray, and carefully donned a pair of well-stuffed pads and an enormously thick woollen jersey for protection, not so much against the cold as against the “flying ball,” it flashed across me that I was about to personify the immortal Dumkins of Pickwick fame; whilst in my companion, the stout butler, it was impossible not to detect the complacent features and rounded form of Mr. Podder.  Up to a certain point the analogy was complete.  Let the Winson Invincibles equal the All Muggleton C.C., while the Edgeworth Daisy Cutters shall be represented by Dingley Dell; then sing us, thou divine author of Pickwick, the glories of that never-to-be-forgotten day.