"A hundred."

"You must have done it wrong," I said suspiciously.

"No, I am sure I didn't.... No, it still comes to a hundred."

"Well, then, I must have made a hundred," I said excitedly. "Are you sure you haven't made a mistake?"

"Quite."

"Then I'd better go and tell the scorer. He put me down a blob—silly ass."

"He's a bad scorer, I know."

"By the way," I said, as I got up, "what number did you think of?"

"Well, it's like this. When you asked me to guess what you had made I instinctively thought of blob, only I didn't like to say so. Then when you began that number game I started with a hundred—it's such an easy number. Double—two hundred. Divided by two—one hundred. Take away the number you first thought of—that's blob, and you have a hundred left. Wasn't that right?"

"You idiot," I said angrily. "Of course it wasn't."