"Better 'ave one and read about it now, Sir; it might be conteradicted in the morning."
THE SCRATCH HANDICAP.
"What do you do?" asked Charles, "when people want you to play lawn-tennis?"
"Sometimes I play," I said. "Sometimes I send Sophonisba. Sometimes I tell them that my head-keeper is away and I am obliged to look after the lop-ears. What happens to you?"
"Well, you know what lawn-tennis is like nowadays. In the bygone butter-pat era I could hold my own with the best of them. Golf had hardly come in, and when one wasn't playing cricket, and the spilliken set had been mislaid, and tiddley-winks was voted too rough, a couple of sets or so was rather fun. Soft undulating courts, very hard to keep a footing on, and plenty of sticks and leaves to assist one's screws, and patches of casual whiting here and there so that you could say that it wasn't a fault but hit the line. Now all that is changed. Panther-limbed, hawk-eyed young persons leap about the lawn dressed in white from top to toe. They play on fast and level lawns, entirely circumscribed by a kind of deep-sea trawling apparatus. They want you to hit hard and well. I have only two strokes when I hit hard. One of them pierces the bottom of the seine or drag-net fixed across the fairway, the other brings the man round from the next-door garden but two to say that his cucumbers are catching cold. And then I do not understand their terms. What is a 'fore-hand drive'? It sounds like the coaching Marathon. And how do you put on top spin? Do you wind your racquet round and round the ball and then pull it away suddenly, or what? And cross-volleys—what in the world are they?"
"Goodness knows," I said. "My own volleys are the best-tempered little chaps alive. But, hang it! no one can force you to play lawn-tennis if you don't want to."
"Can't they?" said Charles. "That's just the point. They do. They say to me, 'You play golf and cricket; of course you can play tennis. Easiest thing in the world.' Swish! swish! they go, making a ferocious cross-hand top-lead from baulk with their umbrellas. 'That's how to do it. You'll soon get into the way of the stroke.' 'That's just what I'm afraid of,' I say, leaping nervously on to the table. But it's no good. 'Come round next Saturday afternoon,' they say, 'we shall be expecting you,' and pass rapidly into the night before I can refuse."
"One can always have a sick headache," I reminded him.
"I did that once," said Charles. "I had been asked to play in a tournament, and at dinner the next evening I sat next to the girl who ought to have been my partner in the mixed handicaps, and we had meringues. No, it isn't safe, and besides one might always want to play golf. I think the best thing is to go once and trust to one's own skill not to be asked again. Anyhow, I don't believe the Jenkinsons will give me another invitation for some time."