"Then now's your chance. Ninety, ninety-nine--they've only just begun. This is Thomas's first break, I expect. There--he's got a clear board. You get five extra for that, and the other man is rubiconed. Ninety-nine all. Now, it is only a question of who misses first." I put down my cue. "Thomas," I began, "we have said some hard things about each other to-night, but when I listen to Archie I feel very friendly towards you." "Archibald," said Thomas, "is a beastly name." "So I told Miss Blair. For a man who was, so to speak, born with a silver billiard-table in his mouth to come here and make fun of two persevering and, in my case, promising players, is----" "You'll never finish that sentence," said Myra. "Try some more billiards." "It was almost impossible to say what I wanted to say grammatically," I answered, and I hit my ball very hard up the table at the white. "It's working across," said Archie, after the second bounce; "it must hit the red soon. I give it three more laps." "It's going much more slowly now," said Miss Blair. "Probably it's keeping a bit of a sprint for the finish. Wait till it gets its second wind. No, I'm afraid it's no good; it ought to have started sooner. Hallo, yes, it's---- Got him!" "It hasn't finished yet," I said calmly. "Look--there!" "Jove!" said Archie, shaking my hand, "that's the longest loser I've ever seen. My dear old man, what a performer. The practice you must have had. The years you must have devoted to the game. I wonder--could you _possibly_ spare an hour or two to-morrow to play cricket for us?" CHAPTER IV A FEW WIRES A hundred and eighty for none. The umpire waved his lily hand, and the scorer entered one more "four" in his book. Seeing that the ball had gone right through a bicycle which was leaning up against the pavilion, many people (the owner of the bicycle, anyhow) must have felt that the actual signalling of a boundary was unnecessary; but our umpire is a stickler for the etiquette of the game. Once when---- But no, on second thoughts, I sha'n't tell you that story. You would say it was a lie--as indeed it is. "Rotten," said Archie to me, as we crossed over. (A good captain always confides in his wicket-keeper.) "Don't take Simpson off," I said. "I like watching him." "I shall go on again myself soon." "Oh, it's not so bad as that. Don't lose heart." The score was two hundred when we met again. "I once read a book by a lady," I said, "in which the hero started the over with his right hand and finished it with his left. I suppose Simpson couldn't do that?" "He's a darned rotten bowler, anyway." "His direction is all right, but his metre is so irregular." At the end of the next over, "What shall I do?" asked Archie in despair. "Put the wicket-keeper on," I said at once. The idea was quite a new one to him. He considered it for a moment. "Can you bowl?" he said at last. "No." "Then what on earth----"