Loud greetings were exchanged as each fresh contingent arrived,
for many newcomers had come into the station only that afternoon.
Every table in the whist room was occupied, black pool was being
played in the billiard room upstairs, where most of the younger
men were gathered, while the elders smoked and talked in the rooms
below.
"What will you do, Bathurst?" the Doctor asked his guest, after
the party from the Major's had been chatting for some little time
downstairs. "Would you like to cut in at a rubber or take a ball
at pool?"
"Neither, Doctor; they are both accomplishments beyond me; I have
not patience for whist, and I can't play billiards in the least.
I have tried over and over again, but I am too nervous, I fancy; I
break down over the easiest stroke--in fact, an easy stroke is
harder for me than a difficult one. I know I ought to make it, and
just for that reason, I suppose, I don't."
"You don't give one the idea of a nervous man, either, Bathurst."
"Well, I am, Doctor, constitutionally, indeed terribly so."
"Not in business matters, anyhow," the Doctor said, with a smile.
"You have the reputation of not minding in the slightest what
responsibility you take upon yourself, and of carrying out what
you undertake in the most resolute, I won't say high handed, manner."
"No, it doesn't come in there," Bathurst laughed. "Morally I am
not nervous so far as I know, physically I am. I would give a great
deal if I could get over it, but, as I have said, it is constitutional.
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