“I’ll give you the game,” said the Poet. “It’s an antiquated pastime, anyhow.”
“Sour grapes,” laughed Galatea.
“Not at all. I’ve thought of an improvement, that’s all,” said the Poet. “Stay where you are, Reginald. William, come here.”
The goat put his nose in the Poet’s hand and followed him to the other end of the field, where he suffered himself to be stationed between the two arches opposite the pig. Over the two arches on one side the Poet stationed Cleopatra and Clarence, and opposite them Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius. The bull-calf wrinkled his yellow nose and looked mutinous, while his comrades seemed much gratified. Then the Poet went calmly around the field and pulled up all the arches, except the centre one, and said:—
“There, all we lack is a camel or an elephant for the centre—but nothing is perfect in this world, at the start.”
“George,” said Galatea, wiping her eyes, “for out-and-out idiocy you certainly take the prize.”
“Not at all. That’s what’s said at first about every great discoverer. There hasn’t been a single improvement in this game in seven hundred years. Now for the first time in history you’re going to see croquet played with living arches—Ouch!”
Clarence had made a sudden playful leap from his position and nipped the Poet’s lean thigh. He was led back and admonished so severely that he meekly refrained from making any further demonstrations.
With perfect gravity the Poet led Galatea and the Artist in a game of croquet calculated to make history. If Mrs. Cowslip had not kicked the Poet’s ball clear off the field when it bounced smartly against her tenderest pastern, and if Gustavius had not destroyed the Artist’s nerve by bellowing hoarsely in his ear at a critical moment, it would have been a bewildering success.
“Anyway,” said the Poet, when Galatea had won through rank favoritism on the part of Reginald, who refrained from sitting down in her critical moment, “anyway, we’ve given one more demonstration that all are born free and equal in the firm of Bos, Equus and Co., even when it comes to croquet.”