"Ping-pong?" My heart sank afresh. It seemed in that house, that games were in the air. "Wouldn't you rather sit here and watch them playing tennis. I like to watch them." I would rather have watched anyone play anything than play myself. But Margaret was of a different mind. "Oh no, what's the fun of it? One gets rusty. Let's do something. Of course ping-pong's not a game one can take really in earnest; but there's a tournament in the schoolroom on Wednesday, and I ought to keep my hand in. Come along and let's have a knock up." We went along. She did not give me a chance to refuse to go along. She led the way. "Of course you _do_ play?" "Well--I have played. But I'm quite sure that I don't play in your sense." "Oh, everyone plays ping-pong--the merest children even. I maintain that it's nothing but a children's game." It might be. In that case, she would soon discover that I was past the age of childhood. "Have you brought your bat?" I had not. "It doesn't matter. We've got about thirty different kinds. You're sure to find your sort among them." A ping-pong board was set up in the billiard-room. On a table at one side were enough bats to stock a shop. I took the one she recommended, and we began. Ping-pong is a loathsome game. I have always said it, and always shall. At home we played it on the dining-room table. The boys made sport of me. They used to declare in derision, that I played "pat-ball." I should have liked some of them to have played with Margaret. She would have played with them, or I err. I thought the serves had come in with disgusting swiftness at lawn-tennis--they were nothing compared to her serves at ping-pong. That wretched little celluloid ball whizzed over the net like lightning, and then, as I struck at it blindly, expecting it to come straight towards me, like a Christian thing, it flew off at an angle, to the right or left, and my bat encountered nothing but the air. On the other hand, when I served she smashed my ball back with such force that it leaped right out of my reach, or any one's, and sometimes clean over the billiard-table. I had soon had enough of it. "Hadn't we better stop?" I inquired, when, for the second time in succession, she had smashed my service nearly up to the ceiling. "It can't be very amusing for you to play with me." A similar reflection seemed to occur to her. Resting her bat on the edge of the board, she regarded me in contemplative fashion. "What _is_ your favourite game?" she asked. For some occult reason the question made me blush, so far, that is, as my state of heat permitted. "I'm not good at any, so I suppose I haven't a favourite game. Indeed, I don't think I'm fond of games." "Not fond of games?" Her tone was almost melancholy, as if my admission grieved her. "That is unfortunate. We're such a gamey crowd--we are all so keen on games." Her bearing so hinted that I had been the occasion to her of actual pain that it almost moved me to tears.