Of course, this was only the beginning. We wouldn't write about tennis at all, if we couldn't give the reader a better account of ourself than this. Our first game filled us with rage, but also with determination. After that we were up at the courts every day the weather permitted, and a few that it didn't. And we worked—Heavens, how we worked! If we had worked like that in the office, we would own the plant by now. When we came in day after day out of the dust and smother, we used to be too tired even to holler in the cold shower. There was no hot water—it was considered effeminate.
Did we make ourself a great player? Well, we are a modest cuss, and although it is with the greatest reluctance that we deny the charge of greatness, we still deny it. Of course, dear reader (presuming that you have been sufficiently interested in our tennis career to read thus far), if you didn't know anything about tennis and were to see us smashing out some of those brilliant drives of ours which always land just a few inches out of the court, or getting that meteoric service over the net—sometimes we rully do, rally!—you might think we were great. But 't is not for us—you understand the delicacy of our position.
As a matter of fact, we did begin to suspect that we were a winner. Not that we got into the habit of bragging about our playing at all, but occasionally we would tell our ladifrens that we thought Norman Brookes and McLaughlin were greatly overrated, and that we wished our club would send us over to Wimbledon to take part in one of the tournaments. They would always assure us that they felt we must be a very fine player, for we were so well built for tennis, so tall and active and such a long reach. Nice girls!
Just when our self-confidence was at its height, we spent a week-end at a place on the Lake where they had a good court. They also had a couple of pretty girls in the family. There was another chap, too, a weedy little Englishman with a blond moustache and a tenor voice that was almost a soprano. The conversation turned on tennis—we believe that we brought it around to that point ourself—and we gave a dramatic account of an awful beating we had handed out to a fellow at the club only a day or so before. We even contributed living pictures of several of our most deadly strokes.
"You play tennis, too, don't you, Mr. Blyth?" asked one of the girls, more by way of bringing him into the conversation than anything else.
He blushed and said he did—a little. Then nothing would do them but that he should play a match with us. He seemed very unwilling, and the more unwilling he was, the more anxious we became to play. Finally we gave our word of honor that we would not drive very hard. He said it was awfully decent of us, and he borrowed one of the girls' rackets, while we drew our gold-medal beauty from its nifty leather case.
Did we drive hard? No, we didn't drive hard. We didn't get a chance. His first ball paralyzed us. Then that little blond brute would get into the middle of the court, and he would place the ball just an inch inside the left-hand line. If we got it back—by a miracle we occasionally did—he would place it just an inch inside the right-hand line, varying the programme with smashes which a man twenty feet tall couldn't handle. He had a service which broke in all directions except where our racket was; and he could pick the ball off the ground or jump ten feet in the air and kill it with equal ease. He drove till our knees wobbled and our head swam; and then he popped over little lobs with a cut on them, which made us look like a cinnamon bear trying to catch butterflies.
We could hardly eat any dinner that evening. For the rest of the week-end the girls sat at that little bounder's feet and begged him to show them how to "serve," how to hold their rackets for the back-hand stroke, etc., etc.
Later we learned he was champion of half a dozen English counties.
