They and I | Page 4

am also trying to put a little
sense into you. At present you are crazy about dancing. If you had your
way, you would turn the house into a dancing-saloon with primitive
sleeping-accommodation attached. It will last six months, your dancing
craze. Then you will want the house transformed into a swimming-bath,
or a skating-rink, or cleared out for hockey. My idea may be
conventional. I don't expect you to sympathise with it. My notion is just
an ordinary Christian house, not a gymnasium. There are going to be

bedrooms in this house, and there's going to be a staircase leading to
them. It may strike you as sordid, but there is also going to be a kitchen:
though why when building the house they should have put the kitchen -
"Don't forget the billiard-room," said Dick.
"If you thought more of your future career and less about billiards,"
Robin pointed out to him, "perhaps you'd get through your Little-go in
the course of the next few years. If Pa only had sense--I mean if he
wasn't so absurdly indulgent wherever you are concerned, he would not
have a billiard-table in the house."
"You talk like that," retorted Dick, "merely because you can't play."
"I can beat you, anyhow," retorted Robin.
"Once," admitted Dick--"once in six weeks."
"Twice," corrected Robin.
"You don't play," Dick explained to her; "you just whack round and
trust to Providence."
"I don't whack round," said Robin; "I always aim at something. When
you try and it doesn't come off, you say it's 'hard luck;' and when I try
and it does come off, you say it's fluking. So like a man."
"You both of you," I said, "attach too much importance to the score.
When you try for a cannon off the white and hit it on the wrong side
and send it into a pocket, and your own ball travels on and makes a
losing hazard off the red, instead of being vexed with yourselves--"
"If you get a really good table, governor," said Dick, "I'll teach you
billiards."
I do believe Dick really thinks he can play. It is the same with golf.
Beginners are invariably lucky. "I think I shall like it," they tell you; "I
seem to have the game in me, if you understand."

'There is a friend of mine, an old sea-captain. He is the sort of man that
when the three balls are lying in a straight line, tucked up under the
cushion, looks pleased; because then he knows he can make a cannon
and leave the red just where he wants it. An Irish youngster named
Malooney, a college chum of Dick's, was staying with us; and the
afternoon being wet, the Captain said he would explain it to Malooney,
how a young man might practise billiards without any danger of cutting
the cloth. He taught him how to hold the cue, and he told him how to
make a bridge. Malooney was grateful, and worked for about an hour.
He did not show much promise. He is a powerfully built young man,
and he didn't seem able to get it into his head that he wasn't playing
cricket. Whenever he hit a little low the result was generally lost ball.
To save time--and damage to furniture--Dick and I fielded for him.
Dick stood at long-stop, and I was short slip. It was dangerous work,
however, and when Dick had caught him out twice running, we agreed
that we had won, and took him in to tea. In the evening--none of the
rest of us being keen to try our luck a second time--the Captain said,
that just for the joke of the thing he would give Malooney eighty-five
and play him a hundred up. To confess the truth, I find no particular fun
myself in playing billiards with the Captain. The game consists, as far
as I am concerned, in walking round the table, throwing him back the
balls, and saying "Good!" By the time my turn comes I don't seem to
care what happens: everything seems against me. He is a kind old
gentleman and he means well, but the tone in which he says "Hard
lines!" whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me. I feel I'd like to
throw the balls at his head and fling the table out of window. I suppose
it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which he
chalks his cue aggravates me. He carries his own chalk in his waistcoat
pocket--as if our chalk wasn't good enough for him-- and when he has
finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his finger and thumb
and taps the cue against the table. "Oh! go on with the game," I want to