J. D. Beresford

“ Over the dessert and the coffee and cigarettes that followed before Miss Kenyon rose from the table, Arthur at last discovered a subject for discussion with his cousin Elizabeth. She was, it seemed, an expert croquet player, and wanted to play in tournaments. She grew quite animated in her talk of the game, although her technicalities were beyond his knowledge.
"I'll teach you, if you like," she said. "It'll be jolly to have some one new to play with. None of the others are any good really." ”

“ The great and essential question of what he was going to do at Hartling, had been solved for him. There would be games, a succession of games of various kinds, to be played with skill against opponents from whom he would be learning all the time. (That old chap Turner was a fair nailer at billiards! He played all his shots with "drag" like a professional!) He would not, of course, be able to improve his own game appreciably in three or four days, but with luck he might be asked to stay a week. He would accept like a bird if they did ask him. ”

“ Arthur found a justification for the theory that such things as new peas, potatoes, and strawberries taste better in the third week of May than at the end of June. It was, he decided, because they brought a foretaste of summer, and the anticipation has always some exquisite flavour that is lacking in the present reality. He was pleased with this conceit and tried it on Miss Kenyon.
She regarded him thoughtfully. "It may be true when one is under forty," she said. "After that, one prefers to live in the present." ”

“ Hubert smiled, with the placatory air of a dog that has been threatened. He was standing with his feet crossed and rocked slowly from one to the other as he spoke.
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing, I was just wondering if you wanted the old man's influence for anything, get you a job as medical attendant to anyone or something of that sort."
"Good Lord, no," Arthur returned brusquely. "Never entered my head for a moment. Didn't I tell you that I thought of going out to Canada for a year or two?" ”

“ His smile had again that gentle, paternal quality as he concluded with a nod of dismissal. "You must indulge the humours of a very old man, and let me choose my own time."
Arthur went back to his place at the other end of the table, with a faint sense of awe.
Mr Kenyon was certainly a wonderful old man. Arthur's mind reverted continually to that thought in the fairly long intervals between the snatches of polite conversation he held with Miss Kenyon, who was on his right at the foot of the table, or with his pretty but uninteresting Cousin Elizabeth on his other side. ”

“ Both Arthur and Eleanor were watching the departing figure of their cousin, and, as often happens when a third person leaves a group, the other two were aware of an impulse to speak of him.
"Poor old Hubert," Eleanor murmured in an undertone. "There's probably nothing in the world he would like better than to go to Canada."
Arthur was surprised. He had already made some sort of estimate of his cousin's character, and sized him up roughly as a "feeble sort of rotter." ”

“ The whiteness of her hands, the spotlessness of her pale gray linen dress, the clearness of her complexion and of her blue eyes, even the lines of her firm, well-nourished young figure were all effects of the protected life she had lived. ”

“ Arthur asked.
Hubert coloured faintly. "No, my grandfather got me a job in a Government office," he said. "I wanted to join up, but he wouldn't let me. I'm sort of steward to this place, you know. There are a couple of farms and so on to look after. Not that I have much to do. However, what I mean is that my grandfather made a tremendous point of keeping me out of the Army, and it was rather difficult for me to disobey him right out. He's—he's not altogether easy to handle." ”

“ Elizabeth smiled the condescending smile of the expert. "It's chiefly a matter of constant practice, of course," she said. "I generally put in a couple of hours every day."
In his heart Arthur thought that croquet was rather a piffling game, and had an "inner conviction that he would very soon be able to give his cousin a good match. He made an appointment with her to take his first lesson the next morning. The Kenyons were not Sabbatarians. "No one goes to church, hardly, except mother," Elizabeth told him. ”

“ The modern house, although it had a well-designed south elevation, in which effective use had been made of mullioned oriel windows corbelled out from the first floor, was less successful inside—if the architect's intention had been to give the impression of age and dignity. ”

“ She had looked up at him and smiled as he was leaving the drawing-room, and he had returned the smile and waved his hand.
Eleanor, presumably, was with her grandfather.
His evening's billiards served him as an object-lesson, in how the game ought to be played. After the first game, Turner gave him two hundred start in three hundred up; a handicap that produced a fairly close finish.
Turner admitted that he kept himself in practice. "Nothing much else to do," he explained, "except get licked by Elizabeth at croquet." ”