Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of
breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were
right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense
in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to
make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one
with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the
losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale
in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch
the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute,
for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her.
A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been
on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and
presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a
dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds
of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and
prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big,
glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

"Blue! Blue!" exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little
whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the
breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind
enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing
crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody
to play cards with--it being his temperament and his temper to throw
good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already
returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their
several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for
motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing
into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the
cloudless afternoon's sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a
practice of taking away his money--Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene.
He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play
with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not
that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least
perm