"A game of hockey, Raymond," here he turned to his brother, "will warm your blood, and bring back your wits. 'Polo,' they call it nowadays; parcel of fools! It's my belief that nine-tenths of the human race to-day don't know what they are talking about. Don't understand their own language, sir! Polo, indeed! Ha! here are the sticks. Now we shall see about this 'old fellow' business!"
Indeed, it was a marvellous thing to see the agility of the Colonel in his favourite sport. He swept here and there, he made the most astonishing hits, he hooked the ball from under the very noses of the amazed and delighted boys. Raymond Ferrers, too, after watching the sport for a few minutes, yielded to the spirit of the hour, and was soon cutting away with the best of them.
A pleasant sight was Jimmy's Pond, indeed! The pond itself was a thing of beauty, a disk of crystal dropped down in a hollow of dark woods; dropped into the middle of this again, a tiny islet, with a group of slender firs, lovely to behold. And dotted here and there on the shining gray-silver of the ice, these happy players, young and old, darted hither and thither, filled with the joy of the hour and the pleasure of each other's presence.
It might have been interesting, could one have stood invisible on the bank, to hear the fragments of talk, as the different groups swept by in the chase. They seemed to drop naturally into couples, without any special prearrangement. First came the two brothers, intent on the ball, bent on keeping it ahead of them, and unconscious of anything else.
"Now, sir!" the Colonel would cry. "Let me see you beat that! Hi! There she—no! she doesn't! Ha! ha! Beat you that time, sir!
"'Poor old Raymound,
Fell into a hay-mound!'
"Do you remember that, sir? Only rhyme I ever made in my life; proud as a peacock I was of it, sir! And what was the scurrilous verse you made about me?"
"'Tommy, Tommy Tantrum,
Crowing like a bantrum!'"
said his brother, laughing.
"I always call them 'bantrums,' always shall. Aha! Where are you now, boy? Off she goes!"