The most confirmed believer in the decadence of the Anglo-Saxon race might have been converted by the sight of the company round Squire Chell's table that night. Young men and maidens, healthy, noisy, effervescent, ate and drank, babbled and laughed, flirted and squabbled with whole-hearted thoroughness from the soup to the savoury; and Pip, sitting silently ecstatic by Elsie, beheld the scene and suddenly realised that life was very good. What a splendid assemblage! The girls, of course, were girls, and as such beyond criticism. And the men? Maybe they were youthful and conventional,--each would probably have cut his own father dead in the street if he had met him wearing a made-up tie,--but Pip knew that they were for the most part clean-run, straight-going people like himself, good fellows, "white" men all. With one exception. And suddenly Pip realised that the exception was sitting on the other side of Elsie. Cullyngham was smiling and talking. He always was smiling. He smiled when he made a century. He smiled when he made a blob. He smiled when a rising ball hit him on the knuckles. He was smiling now, and Elsie was smiling too; and Pip felt suddenly murderous. They were talking of golf. Elsie, who had spent most of her life on the east coast of Scotland, was discussing matters that were Greek to poor cricketing Pip,--stymies, mashies, Kites, Falcons, and other fearful wild-fowl,--and Cullyngham was offering to play Elsie a match round the home course next day. A brief review in Pip's mind of the most expeditious forms of assassination was interrupted by a cheery hail across the table from Jacky Chell, a hearty but tactless youth of boisterous temperament. "Quite like old times, seeing you and Cully together, Pip," he cried. "Played each other any billiard matches lately?" Elsie scented a story. "What billiard match?" she inquired, turning to Pip. "Did you two play much together at Cambridge?" By this time Jacky Chell's stentorian laughter had reduced the table to silence, and all waited for Pip's answer, which when it finally came, was to the effect that Jacky Chell had better dry up. Cullyngham continued to smile, apparently without effort. "What is the story, Jacky?" said the Squire down the table. "Cockles will tell it," said Jacky. "He'll make much more of it than I can." The patrician humourist, thus flatteringly introduced into the conversation, readily took up his parable. "Well, it fell out on this wise, ladies _and_ gents," he began. "Old Cully here regards himself as an absolutely top-hole pill-player, and one day he was laying off to some of us in the Pitt--" "In the _what_?" exclaimed Mrs. Chell. "Undergraduates' Club," interpolated her husband swiftly. "Go on, Cockles." "Well, suddenly Pip cuts in and says, 'Look here, you've talked about your billiards for the last twenty minutes. I'll play you a hundred up now and beat you!'" "And did he?" said several ladies.