The laurestinus quivered.
Jones became a rover, and mobilised with his partner, but not very close.
The Babe failed to mobilise with Reggie.
Gingham shot at his partner and missed.
Reggie mobilised successfully with the Babe.
Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. Jones ought to have separated them but having hit his partner, he tried to put him out, failed, but left himself and his partner both close to the stump.
The Babe smiled, and there was a tea-party of four. He smiled again a little unkindly. He put Gingham out, and he hit Jones’s ball. A moment afterwards a frenzied croquet ball bounded into the net of the tennis-players, and caused the spoon-faced man, for the first time that afternoon, to serve two consecutive faults. Then the Babe went back to his hoop. Gingham was of a peaceful disposition but rather timid. He had, however, caught a glimpse of Jones’s face as he walked off to the lawn-tennis court, and it might reasonably, he said afterwards, have frightened a bolder man than he. So he turned to the Babe.
“You know it’s only a game,” he said, and the Babe replied still rather shrilly:
“Then watch me play it.”
Reggie and the Babe between them could easily keep Mr. Jones’s ball safely off the ground, and the Babe plodded on till he too was a rover, and Reggie and he went out in the next two turns.