‘No, I don’t think we could get up a game for him here. It’s a tremendous game; not like anything so simple as lawn tennis. It is the old jeu de paume, isn’t it?’ said the Rector, ‘the beginning of them all.’
A conversation between the Rector and his son, on a general subject, on a question, something they were both interested in, without reproof on one side, or defence on the other: what a thing that was! Mrs. Plowden’s eyes grew lambent with the light of unusual happiness; after a moment she said: ‘I suppose you play it, Jim?’
‘I!’ said the young man. ‘Oh, I’m not half enough of a swell for that, mother.’
‘I don’t see,’ said the mother, half happy, half indignant, ‘why you shouldn’t be swell enough, Jim, to do anything Mr. Osborne does.’
‘You don’t remember,’ said the Rector sharply, ‘that it takes application to play a game well, as well as to study well, and that Jim never thought it good enough, either for one thing or another.’
Alas! how short the moment of happiness is!
‘Oh, girls,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when lunch was over, and the three ladies were in the drawing-room again, ‘if Mr. Osborne would only take up Jim! He is the only man in the parish who could do it; and now that I hear he plays games and things I feel a little hopeful. For whatever your father may say, I know that Jim is good at all games. We might get up this racquets, whatever it is, and get them to play together. We might ask the General, Florry, what it is. Army men always know everything of that kind. Or, Emmy, you might remember to ask your aunt; and there’s Mr. Swinford; perhaps he plays it too.’
‘I suppose it is a gentleman’s game,’ said Emmy, with perhaps not so strong an enthusiasm.
‘Do you think I might speak to Mr. Osborne about it?’ said the mother, pondering. When she asked advice of her girls it was in fact a sort of thinking aloud, a putting of the question to her own mind. A thing often seems quite different put out in audible words from what it does when only turned over and over in the recesses of your own heart. ‘I might tell him that Jim was very fond of it, and that hearing he was good I thought I would consult him how we should get it up.’
‘But Jim never said he was fond of it, mamma.’