These are the things which mark epochs.
Play was resumed at 2.15. For a quarter of an hour Mike was
comparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowling
really well, and his first half-dozen overs had to be watched
carefully. But the wicket was too good to give him a chance, and Mike,
playing himself in again, proceeded to get to business once more.
Bowlers came and went. Adair pounded away at one end with brief
intervals between the attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs,
in one of which a horse, passing in the road, nearly had its useful
life cut suddenly short. Change-bowlers of various actions and paces,
each weirder and more futile than the last, tried their luck. But
still the first-wicket stand continued.
The bowling of a house team is all head and no body. The first pair
probably have some idea of length and break. The first-change pair are
poor. And the rest, the small change, are simply the sort of things
one sees in dreams after a heavy supper, or when one is out without
one's gun.
Time, mercifully, generally breaks up a big stand at cricket before
the field has suffered too much, and that is what happened now.
At four o'clock, when the score stood at two hundred and twenty
for no wicket, Barnes, greatly daring, smote lustily at a rather
wide half-volley and was caught at short-slip for thirty-three.
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