TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

order to facilitate the efforts of the Butlcy bowlers.

The umpires are in their places. But it is in the
sunshine of my own clarified retrospection that they
are wearing their white coats. While I was describing
them I had forgotten that they have both of them
been dead for many years. Nevertheless, their voices
are distinctly audible to me. "Same boundaries as
usual, Bill?" shouts Seamark, as loudly as if he were
talking to a deaf customer in his tap-room. "Same
as usual. Muster Seamark; three all round and four
over the fence. Draw at six-thirty, and seven if t here's
anything in it," says Sutler. And so, with an intensi-
fied detachment, I look around me at the But ley
players, who are now safely distributed in the
positions which an omniscient Dodd has decreed for
them.

I see myself, an awkward overgrown boy, fielding
anxiously at mid-on. And there's Ned Noakes, the
whiskered and one-eyed wicketkeeper, alert and
active, though he's forty-five if he's a day. With his
one eye (and a glass one) he sees more than most of us
do, and his enthusiasm for the game is apparent in
every attitude. Alongside of him lounges bi# Will
Picksett, a taciturn good-natured young yokel; though
over-deliberate in his movements, Will is a tower of
strength in the team, and he sweeps half-volleys to
the boundary with his enormous brown arms as though
he were scything a hayfield. But there is no more
time to describe the fielders, for Dodd has thrown a
bright red ball to Frank Peckham, who is to begin
the bowling from the top end. While Crump and
Bishop are still on their way to the wickets I cannot
help wondering whether, to modern eyes, the Butlcy
team would not seem just a little unorthodox. William
Dodd, for example, comfortably dressed in a pale

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