Jim Aviolet had played billiards.
“I’m a very poor performer,” said Ford. “Toby could give me fifty in a hundred and a beating, easily. Are you an expert, Diana?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know one end of a cue from the other,” she confessed, and then discounted the admission by adding: “but I can mark for you.”
“I can play,” said Rose, “but I’m awfully bad.”
“I’m afraid that Toby is ‘awfully’ good,” Ford told her, stressing the slang qualification. “If you want a foe worthy of your steel, Toby, we might ask Dr. Lucian up one evening. He’s a local worthy—and a very fine player at that.”
Something in the patronizing inflection of the words, no less than the implied rebuke to herself, roused Rose’s never very deeply dormant pugnacity.
“Dr. Lucian is most awfully nice,” she proclaimed very loudly. “I like him and his sister. They’re—they’re awfully nice.”
She coloured and unconsciously tossed her head as she bore her haltingly worded testimony. There was a moment’s silence.
“I remember Lucian,” said Lord Charlesbury. “A clever fellow, too. I should like to meet him again.”
“Perhaps he could dine here one night, and you might have some good billiards,” said Lady Aviolet.