“She is certainly more than ordinarily pretty,” I replied, “but as to being bewitching that is another matter.”
“Oh! Don’t make any mistake of that sort. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s one and the same thing. A pretty face and a good figure seem to meet the case with most men.”
“I did not know we were discussing a case at all,” I laughed.
But she closed the conversation by adding: “Fine feathers make fine birds,” and she said it very impressively, though for the life of me I could not see the connection.
I played a number of matches during the day, and I did fairly well, but tennis has nothing to do with this story and there is only one little incident that I need describe. It was just after tea and I was in the umpire’s chair. I had to keep my attention closely on the game, both of the men having a service that was difficult to follow, but as I sat perched in my lofty seat, I noticed Ethel and The Tundish conversing very earnestly together.
A few minutes later I heard Ethel say: “Well, it’s spoiling everything, and I certainly wouldn’t have offered to put her up for the tournament if you hadn’t been so insistent.”
They were the full width of the court and then another space away, but the whispered words came to my sensitive ears with every inflection of Ethel’s voice distinct and clear. I could hear the annoyance in it as though it were to me she had whispered and not to the doctor away across the court. I wondered to which of the two girls she referred—my partner or Stella—why it, whatever it was, was spoiling everything, and why The Tundish should have to suggest that either of them should be invited to Dalehouse. The more I thought of it the less I understood it, but Ethel was quite right about our party, there was something the matter with it—something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on was just spoil——
“Wake up, umpire.”
I did with a jerk, to find that they had played two unregistered points while my thoughts had wandered. It was a long, three-set match and when I took the result in to the referee’s tent, although it was getting late he put me on to play, and I was the last of our party to leave the club.
By the time I reached Dalehouse the others had nearly finished supper. There was a sudden lull in the conversation as I came into the room and I felt certain that I had been the subject of their talk; I quickly gathered from their subsequent remarks that Ethel had felt that one of the other two men should have waited for me at the ground. It was quite absurd, of course, but her quick little temper was easily roused, especially so if she imagined that one of her friends had been slighted, and apparently she had not hesitated to lay down the law on the matter.