"Too much taken up with the hair question. Why, Dolly, I didn't know you could be so easily upset."
Mervyn spoke in an elder-brotherly style of assumed reproof, and to his utter amazement Dolly's blue eyes were straightway full to overflowing.
"Why—Dolly!" he uttered.
"Some people are enough to make anybody cross," faltered Dolly, in choked accents.
"Well, but if I were you—Bravo! That's well hit. Game," exclaimed Mervyn, echoing the word which reached them. "Now we shall have to form a new set. I'll ask Edred to join,—shall I? Wait here a moment."
"Why can't you join?" asked Dolly, in her usual tone.
Mervyn paid no attention to the request, but he speedily came back alone. "Lazy fellow,—I can't persuade him," he said lightly.
Dolly made no sign, but her interest in tennis was gone. She played languidly, absently, missing every ball, till her partner, Mervyn, asked, "Why, Dolly, what is the matter?" Then she coloured furiously, and roused herself to do her best, winning acclamations more than once from lookers-on. If only Edred had been among those lookers-on!—but she knew he was not.
"Better ending than beginning," Mervyn remarked, when he and Dolly came out victorious.
"Yes. I suppose I wasn't trying."