A four-wheeler had driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains, directed an eager and questioning gaze.
The cabman had descended, and the passengers within were handing out the articles which they desired him to carry up to the house.

He stood red-faced and blinking, with his crooked arms outstretched, while a male hand, protruding from the window, kept piling up upon him a series of articles the sight of which filled the curious old ladies with bewilderment.
"My goodness me!" cried Monica, the smaller, the drier, and the more wizened of the pair.

"What do you call that, Bertha?
It looks to me like four batter puddings." "Those are what young men box each other with," said Bertha, with a conscious air of superior worldly knowledge.
"And those ?" Two great bottle-shaped pieces of yellow shining wood had been heaped upon the cabman.
"Oh, I don't know what those are," confessed Bertha.

Indian clubs had never before obtruded themselves upon her peaceful and very feminine existence.
These mysterious articles were followed, however, by others which were more within their range of comprehension--by a pair of dumb-bells, a purple cricket-bag, a set of golf clubs, and a tennis racket.

Finally, when the cabman, all top-heavy and bristling, had staggered off up the garden path, there emerged in a very leisurely way from the cab a big, powerfully built young man, with a bull pup under one arm and a pink sporting paper in his hand.