They and I | Page 6

the
desert of Sahara; and a few days later I overheard expressions,
scorching their way through the nursery door, that made my hair rise up.
I entered, and found Veronica standing on the table. Jumbo was sitting
upon the music-stool. The poor dog himself was looking scared, though
he must have heard a bit of language in his time, one way and another.
"Veronica," I said, "are you not ashamed of yourself? You wicked child,
how dare you--"
"It's all right," said Veronica. "I don't really mean any harm. He's a
sailor, and I have to talk to him like that, else he don't know he's being
talked to."
I pay hard-working, conscientious ladies to teach this child things right
and proper for her to know. They tell her clever things that Julius
Caesar said; observations made by Marcus Aurelius that, pondered over,
might help her to become a beautiful character. She complains that it
produces a strange buzzy feeling in her head; and her mother argues
that perhaps her brain is of the creative order, not intended to remember
much--thinks that perhaps she is going to be something. A good
round-dozen oaths the Captain must have let fly before Dick and I
succeeded in rolling her out of the room. She had only heard them once,
yet, so far as I could judge, she had got them letter perfect.

The Captain, now no longer under the necessity of employing all his
energies to suppress his natural instincts, gradually recovered form, and
eventually the game stood at one hundred and forty-nine all, Malooney
to play. The Captain had left the balls in a position that would have
disheartened any other opponent than Malooney. To any other
opponent than Malooney the Captain would have offered irritating
sympathy. "Afraid the balls are not rolling well for you to-night," the
Captain would have said; or, "Sorry, sir, I don't seem to have left you
very much." To-night the Captain wasn't feeling playful.
"Well, if he scores off that!" said Dick.
"Short of locking up the balls and turning out the lights, I don't myself
see how one is going to stop him," sighed the Captain.
The Captain's ball was in hand. Malooney went for the red and hit--
perhaps it would be more correct to say, frightened--it into a pocket.
Malooney's ball, with the table to itself, then gave a solo performance,
and ended up by breaking a window. It was what the lawyers call a nice
point. What was the effect upon the score?
Malooney argued that, seeing he had pocketed the red before his own
ball left the table, his three should be counted first, and that therefore he
had won. Dick maintained that a ball that had ended up in a flower-bed
couldn't be deemed to have scored anything. The Captain declined to
assist. He said that, although he had been playing billiards for upwards
of forty years, the incident was new to him. My own feeling was that of
thankfulness that we had got through the game without anybody being
really injured. We agreed that the person to decide the point would be
the editor of The Field.
It remains still undecided. The Captain came into my study the next
morning. He said: "If you haven't written that letter to The Field, don't
mention my name. They know me on The Field. I would rather it did
not get about that I have been playing with a man who cannot keep his
ball within the four walls of a billiard-room."
"Well," I answered, "I know most of the fellows on The Field myself.

They don't often get hold of anything novel in the way of a story. When
they do, they are apt to harp upon it. My idea was to keep my own
name out of it altogether."
"It is not a point likely to crop up often," said the Captain. "I'd let it rest
if I were you."
I should like to have had it settled. In the end, I wrote the editor a
careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a false name and address. But
if any answer ever appeared I must have missed it.
Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me there
is quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to come out. He is
shy, that is all. He does not seem able to play when people are looking
on. The shots he misses when people are looking on would give you a
wrong idea of him. When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not
often see. If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when there
is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them. Only once I
played up to what