“Out of the mouths of babes! But this’ll gladden you. Middlesex man, stylish, dashing bat, fair change bowler, irreproachable field, is the dark horse. Were you only he, the deity might deign. But as you are merely a club-man with ambitions, be advised, and go and pack your brain in ice. For these cases the cold water cure has the highest testimonials. I’m speaking plain, because it pains me to see Joyous Imbecility riding for a fall. So long as it tumbles on its head there’s no harm done. Besides, the vanity that lives there sometimes gets a jog. But if it drops on top of its emotions, it’s been known to write a book, and that, my pilgrim, in the interests of humanity I feel it my duty to discountenance.”
The General Nuisance having disposed of his piece of news, and having trampled on my feelings as far as considerations for his personal safety would permit, dismounted from the table in a way that involved the overturning of the hot-water dish on to my fox terrier, lying inoffensively on the hearthrug. Thereon he took his leave, professing deep solicitude for my deplorable condition, and departed to advertise it to the world.
Poets always lead one to understand that the tender passion is an ecstatic, quick-breathing sort of thing. But in this present case of mine it simply made me morose and brooding, with a distinct tendency to put me off my ordinary game. Loss of appetite, a general lassitude, moodiness, abstraction, and an instability of purpose that would not let me do any one thing for more than five minutes at a time, were a few of my symptoms on this memorable morning. I loafed about the fields throughout the forenoon with no other companion than the Rubaiyat of Mr. Rudyard Kipling—I am sure I beg your pardon, I mean of course, the Rudyard Kipling of Mr. Omar Kháyyám—for once despising sporting literature, as I had discovered that sport itself was such a hollow, unsatisfying thing. On coming back to lunch I found that my sister Mary had returned from town. To my shame be it said I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Mary is a most sympathetic person, but at the same time I was craving just now for a life of solitude.
“Had a good time?” said I, immediately on the top of the fraternal ceremony.
“Yes, and no,” said Mary, in a way that the best girls have. Yes, to imply that she really had had a good time; no, to suggest that she was not insensible to her severance from a loving brother. A mere man would have been incapable of summing up the exigencies of the moment in this wholly admirable fashion.
“But, Ricky,” said she, placing her hands on my shoulders and looking into my face with tremendously embarrassing intentness, “what’s the matter with you? You look quite old and weary. You didn’t get a duck yesterday.”
“I only got seven,” said I, seeking to creep out on a subterfuge.
“Yes, I bought a Sportsman,” said Mary. “Leg before’s very annoying, I know, but you mustn’t let it wreck your health.”
“But mine was the only single figure,” said I, to still further disarm suspicion.
But all this time Mary’s penetrating glance had never left my dissembling countenance; and when she said, in a rather downright manner, “Look here, Ricky, I don’t think it’s that at all,” I was not a bit surprised by her profundity, although it did not prevent me looking guilty.