Hilltown is a very pretty place, and some of its people are very wealthy. They see that it has good roads for their village-carts and landaus to roll over, and their Queen Anne cottages are distinctly ornamental to the surrounding landscape.
They have also laid out and inclosed eight tennis-courts of both clay and turf, to suit every one’s taste, and have erected a club-house which is apparently fashioned after no one’s. Every year Hilltown invited the neighboring tennis-clubs of Malvern and Pineville to compete with them in an interclub tournament, and offered handsome prizes which were invariably won by representatives of Hilltown.
But this year, owing chiefly to the energies of Mr. C. Percy Clay, the club’s enthusiastic secretary, Hilltown had been allowed to hold a tournament on its own tennis-ground for the double and single championship of the State. This honor necessitated the postponement of the annual tri-club meeting until ten days after the championship games had been played.
The team who did the playing for the Hilltown club were two young men locally known as the Slade brothers.
They were not popular, owing to their assuming an air of superiority over every one in the town, from their father down to C. Percy Clay. But as they had won every prize of which the tennis-club could boast, they of necessity enjoyed a prominence which their personal conduct alone could not have gained for them.
Charles Grace arrived at Hilltown one Wednesday morning. All but the final game of the doubles had been played off on the two days previous, and the singles were to be begun and completed that afternoon. The grounds were well filled when he reached them, and looked as pretty as only pretty tennis-grounds can look when they are gay with well-dressed girls, wonderfully bright blazers, and marquees of vividly brilliant stripes.
Grace found the list of entries to the singles posted up in the club-house, and discovered that they were few in number, and that there was among them only one name that was familiar to him.
As he turned away from the list, two very young and bright-faced boys, in very well-worn flannels, came up the steps of the club-house just as one of the Slades was leaving it.
“Hullo,” said Slade, “you back again?”
It was such an unusual and impertinent welcome that Grace paused in some surprise and turned to listen.