Anne’s Terrible Good Nature (Collection)/Roderick’s Pros

RODERICK'S PROS.Once upon a time there was a little boy of ten, who bowled out C. B. Fry. This little boy's name was Roderick Bulstrode (or Bulstrode is the name that we will give him here), and he lived in St. John's Wood, in one of the houses whose gardens join Lord's. His father played for the M.C.C. a good deal, and practised in the nets almost every day, to the bowling of various professionals, or pros., as they are called for short, but chiefly to that of Tom Stick; and in the summer Roderick was more often at Lord's than not.
How it came about that Roderick bowled C. B. Fry was this way. Middlesex were playing Sussex, and Mr. Fry went to the nets early to practise, and Roderick's father bowled to him and let Roderick have the ball now and then. And whether it was that Mr. Fry was not thinking, or was looking another way, or was simply very good-natured, I don't know, but one of Roderick's sneaks got under his bat and hit the stumps. (They were not sneaks, you must understand, because he wanted to bowl sneaks, but because he was not big enough to bowl any other way for 22 yards. He was only ten.) Roderick thus did that day what no one else could do, for Mr. Fry went in and m

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