Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/17

Rh "No, I'll see you do it once more," Sherwood decided. The men put back their watches and settled into their seats. The new game rushed on. Geoff Sherwood leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, following the triumph of his friend with the envy which a boy, just at his majority, holds toward a man ten years older who can beat him at almost any game.

There were few men of any age, either amateur or professional, who consistently could conquer Price Latham in any gentleman's sport, whether it was rackets in the downtown club in winter, polo in summer, or yacht racing or aeroplaning. Geoff had no need to envy his friend's lithe, strong and symmetrical figure; but Latham's perfect command of himself, his easy, effortless expenditure of strength—as now at this moment when suddenly he took his opponent entirely off guard and scored a brilliant "ace"—was Geoff's despair. So, as in worship he watched his hero, Geoff wondered again what in the world was wrong with his sister that she still clung to the memory of a man to whom she'd merely been engaged four years before, and who had been missing