Val assented, with hearty good-will, and he really showed a good deal of dexterity, for a boy of his age, in the noble art of knocking the ivory balls about.
He made a very good “run” before he missed, and then drew back with:
“There, Barnaby, the balls are in an awful bad position. I couldn’t make that carrom myself. Not many men could, but you’ll never learn if you don’t try. This is the shot. See?”
Bar had been leisurely chalking his cue. Some things Val had said had unintentionally nettled him, and he had hardly been as frank as he should have been.
Now, however, he stepped quietly forward, made the impossible shot with an ease and quickness which altogether electrified Val, and followed it up with a dozen others of almost equal difficulty, ending by running the two red balls into a corner and scoring a clean fifty before he made a miss-cue and lost control of them.
Val had stood watching him in silence to the end, but when Bar turned to him with:
“Your turn again now!” he exclaimed.
“My turn? I should say so. Well, I’ll play the game out, but billiards isn’t one of the things that I have to teach you. You can give me lessons all the while.”
So it looked, indeed, but poor Bar had paid dearly enough for that useless bit of an accomplishment, and he would gladly have traded it with Val for a few of the things the latter probably valued very lightly.
After the billiards, Val suggested a visit to the gymnasium, not a great many blocks away, but there he was even more astonished than he had been in the billiard-room.