For months I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering
phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. Last Tuesday
my opportunity arrived.
A stranger was sitting comfortably in a deck-chair watching the vacant
courts at the tennis club. His keen bronzed face and his obviously
athletic body, clothed in white flannel, brought back to me the far days
when the sharp clean crack in the adjoining field told of a loose one
which had been got away square.
I looked at him again and thought how glad he must be to get into mufti
for a few days. I tell you this to show how unprejudiced I was. The only
other signs of life were the two super-aborigines who inhabit the
croquet patch and detest all other mankind. I approached one of them
warily and asked a question. He regarded me with a bilious and
suspicious eye.
"Nothing whatever to do with the Army," he snapped, and a Prussian-blue
opponent was smacked off into an arid and hoopless waste.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "then he's only a rabbit after all."
The old thing gave me an unfriendly glance and then missed his hoop
badly. I strolled across and sat down beside the newcomer. He smiled at
me in a frank and disarming manner.
"What do you think of our courts?" I said by way of a start.
"Top-hole," he replied; "I'm looking forward to some jolly games on
'em."
His obvious disregard of perspective annoyed me. In our village, tennis
is now played for hygienic reasons only.
"I'm afraid we can't offer you much of a game," I said. "You see there's
a war on, and--but perhaps I can fix up a single for you after tea with
old Patterby. I believe he was very hot stuff in the seventies."
"That's very good of you. I expect he'll knock my head off; I'm no use
at the game yet."
He spoke as though an endless and blissful period of practice was in
front of him.
"I suppose you'll be going back soon?"
"Back where?"
"I mean your leave will be up."
"Oh, I'm out of a job just now."
So it was genuine blatant indifference. I looked round for something
with which to slay him.
"I wonder," he said thoughtfully, "if I shall ever find my tennis legs
again."
"Have you lost them?" I asked sarcastically.
"I'm afraid so--er--that is, of course, only one of them really."
"Only one of them?" I repeated vaguely.
"Yes, Fritzie got it at Jutland; but these new mark gadgets are
top-hole. I can nearly dance the fox-trot with mine already."
He stretched out the gadget in question and patted it affectionately.
The ensuing moment I count as the worst one I have ever known. I had
forgotten the Navy. My only excuse is that nowadays, owing to its urgent
and unadvertised affairs, we seldom have an opportunity in our village
of meeting the Senior Service. But I feel convinced that the irascible
Methuselah on the croquet ground was purposely and maliciously guilty of
_suppressio veri_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "OLE BILL SEZ 'E 'ARDLY NEVER SEES 'IS MISSUS NAH."
"OH! 'OW'S THAT, THEN?"
"COS SHE'S ALL MORNIN' AN' ARTERNOON IN A SUGAR CUE, AND 'E'S ALL
EVENIN' IN A BEER CUE."]
* * * * *
"Wanted, good Man, to cut, make, and trim
specials."--_Yorkshire Paper._
In Yorkshire the new policeman's lot doesn't seem to be a very happy
one.
* * * * *