'With breaks, I hope,' he answered, cheerfully. 'And then, you know, living at Brighton, you ought to be half a sailor--you shouldn't mind a shower.' 'Oh, but I do,' she said. 'It's all very well for Nan to get on her thick boots and her waterproof and go splashing away across ploughed fields. I wonder what the house would be like if every one went on in that way, and came home all over mud.' However, Madge soon repented of her petulance, and was quite attentively kind to the new guest, even reproving him for not attending to his dinner, and letting things pass. Dinner over, Mr. Tom took his mother's seat, and somewhat grandly sent round the wine. As nobody took any, and as starting subjects of interest was not Mr. Tom's strong point, he suddenly proposed that they should go into the billiard-room and send for the girls. This was acceded to at once. Now billiards is a game in which a good deal of favour can be shown, in a more or less open way. Mr. Tom, having no one of sufficient skill to match himself against, chose to mark, and directed the remaining four to have a double-handed game. Mr. Roberts immediately declared that Madge and himself would play Captain King and Miss Edith. This was assented to in silence, though Madge did not look well pleased, and the game began. Very soon Mr. Tom said-- 'What's the matter with you, Madge? Are you playing dark? Have you got money on?' Frank King followed Madge, and it was most extraordinary how she was always missing by a hairsbreadth, and leaving balls over pockets. 'What do you mean, Madge?' Mr. Tom protested. 'Why didn't you put the white ball in and go into baulk?' 'I don't play Whitechapel,' said Madge, proudly. Frank King and his partner seemed to be getting on very well; somehow, Madge and the joyous Roberts did not score. 'Look here,' said Mr. Tom, addressing the company at large after she had missed an easy shot, 'she's only humbugging; she's a first-rate player; she could give any one of you thirty in a hundred and make you wish you had never been born. I say it's all humbug; she's a first-rate player. Why, she once beat me, playing even!' But even this protest did not hinder Frank King and Edith coming out triumphant winners; and Madge did not seem at all depressed by her defeat, though she said apologetically to Mr. Roberts that one could not play one's best always. Mr. Tom perceived that this would not do, so he fell back on pool (penny and sixpenny), so that each should fight for his own hand. He himself took a ball, but, being strong and also magnanimous, would have no more than two lives. Here, however, a strange thing happened. Frank King's ball was yellow, Madge's green, Mr. Tom's brown. Now, by some mysterious process, that yellow ball was always in a commanding position near the middle of the table, while, when Mr. Tom came to play, the green ball was as invariably under a cushion.