“And you never told us?” said Colin. “Lord! What a swell he is, father! We’re not worthy to hear about it; that’s what is the matter with us.”
Philip turned to Raymond. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s pleasant news. There’s Colin here, who won’t do anything more violent than golf.”
“Oh, father! What about shooting pigeons?” said Colin. “Oh, no, Raymond did that. Bother! There was a man with a gun....”
Philip got up. “Now don’t get on to that again,” he said. “You’ve amused us enough for one night....”
“But I may amuse Vi, mayn’t I, if I think of the rest of it?” asked Colin.
Philip turned his back on him and took Raymond’s arm. He had the sense of behaving with great fairness, but the impartiality demanded effort.
“Ring the bell, Colin, will you?” he said over his shoulder. “I’m delighted to hear about your success in the—the football field, Raymond. Games are taking the place of sport in this generation. Your Uncle Ronald and I never played games; there was shooting, there was riding....”
“Oh, but there’s lots of sport still,” said Colin. “Big game, father; large animals. Not footballs, things that feel.... And then my bicycle punctured. Oh, you wanted me to ring.”
At this rite of whist for the sake of old Lady Yardley, it was necessary that one of the five should cut out. She herself and Philip took no part in this chance; the rite was that both should play if there was not another table to be formed. Raymond turned the highest card, and with a paper to beguile him, sat just where he had sat when one night the whist-table had broken up, and he heard Colin’s mimicry. As the four others cut for deal, some memory of that must have come into Colin’s mind.
“What an awful night that was, Vi,” he said, “when we were playing bridge with Aunt Hester. She revoked, do you remember, and swore she hadn’t. How we laughed. And then I thought everybody else had gone to bed, and I—good Lord.... Yes!”