Elsie Innes looked him straight in the face. "Pip," she said, "do you wear gloves?"
Pip extended two enormous palms and inspected them doubtfully. "Sometimes," he said—"at weddings."
"Very good. I'll bet you ten pairs of gloves to one that you get your Blue."
"Don't!" said Pip appealingly. "You couldn't afford it. I take nines."
"My size," said Miss Innes, "is six-and-a-quarter. White kid—eight buttons. Good-bye!"
She turned and vanished into the recesses of the hall, a receding vision of white frock, glinting hair, and black bow.
After Pip had walked down two streets and halfway across a square, he stopped suddenly and dealt his leg a blow with a tennis-racquet that would have maimed an ordinary limb for life.
"By gad," he cried to a scandalised pug-dog which was taking the evening air on an adjacent doorstep, "she called me Pip!"
Next morning he received a communication from the authorities of the Cambridge University Cricket Club.