The other day I watched a game of tennis. I had placed the lounge-chair in a safe and shady position. I had got a paper-knife and the third volume with me. The cat had followed me out of the library, and sat down in a convenient position so that I could scratch it gently behind the ear if I wanted to. I was smoking a pipe that had just reached the right stage of maturity, and, in some indefinable way, made life seem richer and better. Everything was well arranged for the watching of tennis. There were two players--BILL, a young son of the house, whom I knew intimately, and TOMMY, a boy of the same age, who had just come up from the Rectory. I had not seen TOMMY before. He was a nice-looking little boy, and wore a black necktie in the collar of his silk tennis-shirt. BILL is not good-looking; he is red and freckled, and grins vastly. He was wearing rather unclean flannels, and did not look quite so refined and delicate as TOMMY. I compared the two boys, and thought that I preferred BILL. In the first game of the set, BILL, who plays wonderfully well, won easily; after that, my attention got fixed on that third volume. I turned down a corner of the page whenever I came across anything that was at all conventional. I was reading the book for review, and my notice of it was to appear in _The Scalpel_ on the following Saturday. It was, on the whole, a capital novel, but it was by an author who had been, I thought, more successful than was good for him. He had been elected freely to the best Clubs. During the season he had gone everywhere. Many editions of his book had been sold. He had acquired a little cult who said extravagant things about him in the literary papers. It is sickening to see a man reverenced during his lifetime. I could imagine him posing before his cult and being pleased; even before I had read a page of his novel, I had made up my mind to administer to him a wholesome corrective in the pages of _The Scalpel_. I was rather sorry to find that it was really a capital novel; but it had enough faults for my purpose. I had read for some time before I turned my attention to the game again. When I did so, I was startled, for it was perfectly obvious that BILL was giving the game away. His usual service is a little like invisible lightning with a bend in it; he was now serving in a modified manner, which he generally uses only when he is playing with girls who are not his sisters. It was also obvious that TOMMY, who looked very elated, fully believed that he was winning on his own merits, and had no idea that BILL was merely allowing him to win. [Illustration] "My game--and set!" cried TOMMY, joyously. "You've improved awfully," said BILL.