“Well, by rights you ought to get pneumonia, and be prayed for in chapel, and die in spite of it.”
David pushed back his hair again and laughed.
“Thanks awfully, but otherwise engaged,” he said.
“Are you going up to house after you’ve finished being drowned?” asked Maddox.
“No, I was going to have tea with a fellow in college,” said David. “But I’m rather wet, I’m afraid.”
“You’ll go up to house and change first, do you see?” said Maddox. “And you might bring up a parcel there will be for me at the lodge. Hasn’t come yet, but it’ll come any minute.”
“Right,” said David.
The game was resumed, but Maddox still lingered. Both boys played with redoubled keenness before so honourable a spectator, but David’s artless and incessant conversation was felt by him to be unsuitable. Maddox watched in silence for a minute.
“No, let the ball drop more,” he said, Bags having made an egregiously futile return. “Don’t take an easy ball like that till it’s quite low. David, you play with your whole arm like a windmill, whereas you only want your wrist. Just keep flicking it: look here.”
Maddox gave David the large umbrella to hold and, taking his racquet, knocked up down the left-hand wall of the court, sending each ball parallel and close to it, with easy accuracy. “Like that more or less,” he said. “Now I’m wet, blast you both.”