Part 23 (2/2)
”Well, suddenly Pip cuts in and says, 'Look here, you've talked about your billiards for the last twenty minutes. I'll play you a hundred up now and beat you!'”
”And did he?” said several ladies.
”Wait a bit, _if_ you please. None of us knew much about Pip's game, as he had just joined the club, but we all went into the billiard place next door, and I stood on a sofa and made a book--”
”What price?”
”Three to one on Cully.”
”Who _won_?” cried the flapper.
”_Wait_ a bit,” said c.o.c.kles severely. ”Don't crab my story. Cully went off at the start and rattled up a couple of fifteens almost before Pip got his cue chalked. He reached his fifty just as Pip got to five.”
Sensation.
”The odds,” continued the narrator, smacking his lips, ”then receded to ten to one, and no takers. Then Cully got to seventy-five just after Pip had reached eighteen--wasn't it, Pip?”
No reply.
”Right-o! Never mind if you're shy. Anyhow, old Cully, being naturally a bit above himself, gave a sort of chuckle, and said, 'What odds now, Pip, old man?'”
”Ooh!” said Miss Dorothy Ch.e.l.l. ”How ras.h.!.+ It was quite enough to change your luck, Mr. Cullyngham.”
”Did you tap wood when you said it, Mr. Cullyngham?” screamed the flapper down the table.
Mr. Cullyngham, possibly owing to the effort involved in keeping up a protracted smile, did not reply.
”Well,” continued c.o.c.kles, ”Pip just turned to him and said, 'I won't take any odds, but I'm da--blessed if I don't beat you yet.' And my word, do you know what he did?”
”What?” came from all corners of the table.
”He got the b.a.l.l.s together a few minutes later, settled down--and ran out!”
”What for?” inquired Miss Calthrop languidly.
”What for? He _won_. A break of eighty-three, unfinished. He wouldn't go on. Said he had come there to beat Cully, not to make a show of himself.
The old ruffian! He had lain pretty low about his powers. Hadn't he, Cully?”
Cullyngham, to his eternal credit, still smiled.
”Rather!” he said. ”You had me that time, Pip, old man.”
Cullyngham's good nature and tact having smoothed over the rather jarring sensation produced by c.o.c.kles's thoroughly tactless reminiscences, conversation became general again. But Pip wriggled in his seat. He hated publicity of any kind, and he felt, moreover, that although he was the undoubted hero of c.o.c.kles's story, the smiling, unruffled man on the other side of Elsie was coming out of the affair better than he, if only by reason of the easy nonchalance with which he had faced a situation that had been rather unfairly forced upon him.
III
Next day came the match against the village. It was a serio-comic fixture, and as such does not call for detailed description. The Squire was early astir in cricket flannels and Harris tweed jacket, the latter garment being replaced at high noon by an M.C.C. blazer which ought to have been let out at the seams twenty years ago: and in good time all the company a.s.sembled on the Rustleford Manor cricket-ground.
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