'What's the matter with you, Madge? Are you playing dark? Have you got money on?'
Frank King followed Madge, and it was most extraordinary how she was always missing by a hairsbreadth, and leaving balls over pockets.
'What do you mean, Madge?' Mr. Tom protested. 'Why didn't you put the white ball in and go into baulk?'
'I don't play Whitechapel,' said Madge, proudly.
Frank King and his partner seemed to be getting on very well; somehow,
Madge and the joyous Roberts did not score.
'Look here,' said Mr. Tom, addressing the company at large after she had missed an easy shot, 'she's only humbugging; she's a first-rate player; she could give any one of you thirty in a hundred and make you wish you had never been born. I say it's all humbug; she's a first-rate player. Why, she once beat me, playing even!'
But even this protest did not hinder Frank King and Edith coming out triumphant winners; and Madge did not seem at all depressed by her defeat, though she said apologetically to Mr. Roberts that one could not play one's best always.
Mr. Tom perceived that this would not do, so he fell back on pool (penny and sixpenny), so that each should fight for his own hand. He himself took a ball, but, being strong and also magnanimous, would have no more than two lives.
Here, however, a strange thing happened. Frank King's ball was yellow, Madge's green, Mr. Tom's brown. Now, by some mysterious process, that yellow ball was always in a commanding position near the middle of the table, while, when Mr. Tom came to play, the green ball was as invariably under a cushion.
'Well, you are a sniggler, Madge,' said her brother, becoming very angry. 'You play for not a single thing but the cushion. I didn't think you cared so much for twopence-halfpenny in coppers.'