I tried to be, but I failed ignominiously. I do declare that I am not always so bad as I was then. But, as I have said, I was a little off my balance; and all I could do was make an idiot of myself. Bertha served first; my partner suggested I should take her service. I took it, or rather, I didn't take it. She sent the balls so fast that I could scarcely see them; and then there was such a twist on them, or whatever you call the thing, that I could not have hit them anyhow. I did not hit them, not one. "What horrid balls," I murmured, when Bertha had made an end. "You seem to find them so." My partner spoke with such excessive dryness that I could have hit her with my racket. When it came to her turn to serve she asked me a question. "Won't you stand up to the net and kill their returns?" No, I would not stand up to the net and kill their returns. I did not know what she meant, but I knew that I would not do it. And I did not. She herself played as if she had been doing nothing else all her life but play lawn-tennis. She was all over the place at once. I was only in her way, and she treated me as if I was only in her way. I had to dodge when I saw her coming, or she would have sent me flying--more than once she nearly did. It was a painful fiasco, so far as I was concerned; I have a dim suspicion that we scored nothing. When the game was finished she looked me up and down. "Bit off your game, aren't you?" "I'm afraid I am," I muttered. I was too cast down to do anything else but mutter. There was a look in her eyes which, unless I was mistaken, meant temper. And she was such a very stalwart person that I had a horrible feeling that, unless I was very careful, she might make nothing of shaking me. "Perhaps you're stronger in singles; I should like to play you a single; will you?" "Thank you, some--some other time." "Shall we say to-morrow?" We did not say to-morrow. I would not have said to-morrow for a good deal. Margaret came to my rescue. "You play Bertha. Molly and I'll look on." We looked on, while they performed prodigies. I had never before seen such playing. The idea of my associating myself with them was preposterous. As we watched, Margaret was not so loquacious as I should have desired. In her silence I seemed to read disapprobation of the exhibition of incompetence which I had given. Moreover, when she did speak, her remarks took the form of criticisms of the play, approving this stroke, condemning that, with a degree of severity which made me wince. It was impossible to sit beside her for many seconds without realising that she regarded lawn-tennis with a seriousness of which--in that connection--I had never dreamed. Obviously, with her, it was one of the serious things of life. Suddenly she hit upon a theme which was not much more palatable to me than lawn-tennis had been, in such company. "Let's play ping-pong, you and me?"