The professor suddenly doubled-up and rubbed his belt. He had caught a stabbing blow “in the wind,” as they say in boxing.
“Game and set!” exulted the middleman, and then offered satiric apologies for the knock-out; but the young man heard not; he was busy getting his breath and watching Miss Levering mimicking a gentleman doubled-up with a tennis ball in his stomach. A man may do some things, he thought as he pressed his lips and tried not to wince, that a lady should under no circumstances do. The young woman was certainly not herself that morning. Besides, he had borne the blow like a soldier, and had only passed a hand lightly over the burning spot, while she—she was pantomiming like a child with the colic.
His memory of her conduct on other occasions gave no hint of this. He recalled a quiet, lady-like person, mature, solicitous of the latest news of Elizabethan playwrights. The miss before him, sitting tailor-fashion on the grass, was carrying on—why, she was puckering her lips like a—but so was he!
And now she was flirting with him, one eye deliberately closed, the other looking up mischievously. Could it be the heat?
Finally he marched over and accused her of losing his game.
“You sat there telling me all my faults in sign language,” he told her. “I got so interested I forgot how to play.”
“Just when did you learn?” she inquired mildly.
“Well!” he looked at her. Without doubt he was an erratic player, brilliant and simply bad alternately, the sort that never improves; but he had not the least ambition to do better, so the satire had no sting for him. “Well!” he retorted. “It wasn’t yesterday.”
“No!” she speculated. “No! It couldn’t have been yesterday; it must have been this morning—after luncheon.”
Her right hand made a vigorous swish through the air; her eyes followed an imaginary ball which obviously sailed high out of bounds; her left had come clap over the mouth in clear chagrin. In a flash the professor had himself dramatically presented at his worst, but her cheerful laughter saved the mimicry from anything but good-natured raillery.