asn't trying to make out that golf is better than cricket,
but was just saying what games a man can play without being sworn at as
if he were a coolie," Ward said.

"I refuse to take amusements seriously," Dennison continued. "I would
sooner shout with laughter at a funeral than lose my temper playing a
game."

"The sweetest thing on earth," I said, "is to catch a fast half-volley
to leg plumb in the middle of the bat."

"It isn't in the same street with a comic opera at the Savoy after a
good dinner," Lambert remarked.

"At any rate it doesn't last so long," Dennison, who had a queer idea
of what was funny, put in.

"A punt, good cushions, June, and a novel by one of those people who
make you feel sleepy, are hard to beat," Collier stated.

"You are a Sybarite," Dennison said, "and you will be a disappointed
one before long. All we do here in the summer is to give our relations
strawberries and cream and run with our college eight."

"How do you know?" Collier asked, but to so searching a question he got
no reply.

"The finest sight in the world is a thoroughbred horse," Ward said.

"You must have gone about with your eyes shut," Dennison declared.

"Don't sit there talking rot," I said. "If anything ever pleases you,
tell us what it is."

"My greatest pleasure is in polite conversation," he answered.

"Oh, you are a sarcastic idiot," I retorted, for people who are
afflicted by thinking themselves funny when I think they are idiotic
always make me rude.

"Dennison never says what he means," Ward explained, "it is a little
habit of his."

"Why can't you talk straight, it's much simpler, and doesn't make me
feel so horribly uncomfortable?" I asked, turning to Dennison.

"Marten is getting angry," was the only answer I received, and it was
so near the truth that I wanted to pick him up and drop him in the
passage.

Ward, however, calmed my feelings by saying that he could not imagine
any one troubling to be angry with Dennison. "The one thing he prides
himself on is getting a rise out of people, and we aren't such fools as
he thinks us."

"And he is a much bigger fool than he thinks," Collier said solemnly.

"You are a nice complimentary lot," Dennison remarked, smiling amiably
upon us.

"It's your own fault," Collier continued; "you try to be clever and
succeed in being confoundedly dull. I was at school with him for five
years and I know his only strong point is that the more you abuse him