nnot
explain. Henderson was my partner and he seemed to me to do the most
odd things. For instance when I led a spade and he took the trick,
instead of leading another spade he would begin some fresh suit, which
made me wonder what in the world he was doing. And he did not seem to
think his trumps half as valuable as I thought mine, but just led them
whenever he felt inclined. When Nina, Foster and I played whist it was
considered pretty bad form to lead trumps when we had anything else to
lead, and we kept them for a big outburst at the finish. I pitied
myself considerably for having Henderson as a partner, and I was very
surprised to see Murray doing the same odd sort of things. So at the
end of one rubber Foster and I played together, but I cannot say that
we had much luck, and just at the end I made a revoke which Murray was
brute enough to notice. When Henderson had gone I said that he seemed
to be a rare good sort, but it was a pity he did not know a little more
about whist. I hoped Murray would take that remark partly to himself,
because at the end of every hand he had talked to Henderson about what
might have happened if he had led a different card, and sometimes he
even went on jawing when he had got his fresh hand, which quite put me
off my game. But all Murray did was to laugh, while Foster said to me
that he was afraid our way of playing whist was all wrong, and I had
some difficulty in persuading him that it was not. Then Murray said
something about reading Cavendish carefully, but I had heard some one
say that Cavendish was out of date, so I borrowed this man's opinion
and expressed it as my own, which amused Murray so much that if I had
not been sorry for him I believe I should have lost my temper.

At last, however, we stopped discussing whist, and after I had made
Foster and Murray swear they would tell no one else, I gave them an
account of Owen coming to see me. Before I began Foster declared that
the reason I bound them to keep my secret was because I wanted to tell
it to every one myself. In fact he expected the whole thing to be some
miserable little affair, for I had a habit, which I have since
abandoned, of extracting the most terrific promises of secrecy from my
friends and then telling them something which they did not think as
important as I did. I started that game because I had once told
something really funny to a lot of fellows at Cliborough, and they went
and spread it about