CHAPTER I

They kicked off from the summer-house end, and, after jockeying for the start a bit, the N.R. champion got going. He went very slowly but very surely. I watched anxiously for ten minutes, expecting my turn every moment. After a quarter of an hour I raised my hat and moved away.

"Shall we sit down?" I said to Miss Middleton.

"We shall be in the way if we sit down here, sha'n't we?"

"Outside that chalk line we're safe?"

"I--I suppose so."

We moved outside and sat down on the grass.

"I never even had a chalk line," I said mournfully.

"It's much more fun without."

"You know," I went on, "I can beat them all at home. Why even Wilfrid----"

"It's just the same with me," said Miss Middleton. "Hilda did win once by a frightful fluke, but----"

"But this is quite different. At home it would be considered jolly bad form to go on all this time."

"One would simply go in and leave them," said Miss Middleton.

"You know, it's awful fun at home. The lawn goes down in terraces, and if you hit the other person's ball hard enough you can get it right down to the bottom; and it takes at least six to get back on the green again."

Miss Middleton gurgled to herself.

"We've got a stream ... round our lawn," she said, in gasps. "It's such a joke ... and once ... when Hilda..."