“You’re right, by George! Did you tell this to Blenkinson?”
“To that old woman!”
A silence came. I watched her; her eyes wandered restlessly from object to object within the room. She turned suddenly toward the window and looked at the glorious day, and as quickly turned to me again. “Oh, this is too good to be wasted! I must play. I’ve got to have someone to beat, Mr. Bannerlee; may I beat you?”
The youth and verve of this girl, her strength of spirit, and the unspoken appeal in her clear blue eyes, were almost too much for me. There was a directness about her, like the passage of an arrow to its mark, unusual in women, I believe, when combined with such softness and allurement as is hers. I had a very noble impulse to take that straight and slender body in my arms, and to bestow a needful comfort of kisses on lips and cheeks and on that cruel golden hair.
As with most such good impulses, this one changed into something inferior: I bowed politely. “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll borrow what I need from Crofts, as usual.”
“Will you? Oh, thank you so much!” (To be thanked, so earnestly, by a dea certe!) “I warn you, I’ll beat you. I hope you can give me a battle.”
Such was my hope, too, when we stepped on the concrete court a quarter of an hour later.
I should have been routed had I not been able to deliver a smashing serve which landed in the proper court about one time in three. These serves were almost always clean aces, and after one of them I was startled to hear applause from the little knoll which overlooked the court some distance away. There was Lib.
“Hotto servo, old sportsman!” she called. “Glad there’s somebody Paula’ll let play with her old tennis balls.”
It was due to happen sooner or later, of course, but it was rather humiliating immediately afterward to have a wild shot from my racquet fly many yards over the enclosure.