chance had come. I could have scored myself as the balls were then.

"Sixty-two plays one hundred and twenty-eight. Now then, Captain,
game in your hands," said Dick.

We gathered round. The children left their play. It was a pretty
picture: the bright young faces, eager with expectation, the old
worn veteran squinting down his cue, as if afraid that watching
Malooney's play might have given it the squirms.

"Now follow this," I whispered to Malooney. "Don't notice merely
what he does, but try and understand why he does it. Any fool--after
a little practice, that is--can hit a ball. But why do you hit it?
What happens after you've hit it? What--"

"Hush," said Dick.

The Captain drew his cue back and gently pushed it forward.

"Pretty stroke," I whispered to Malooney; "now, that's the sort--"

I offer, by way of explanation, that the Captain by this time was
probably too full of bottled-up language to be master of his nerves.
The ball travelled slowly past the red. Dick said afterwards that
you couldn't have put so much as a sheet of paper between them. It
comforts a man, sometimes, when you tell him this; and at other times
it only makes him madder. It travelled on and passed the white--you
could have put quite a lot of paper between it and the white--and
dropped with a contented thud into the top left-hand pocket.