Even newly arrived players in the background waited in silence.
Then he recovered his confidence.

There was the ball and there was the club--it was easy, wasn't it?
Make a mountain out of a mole hill, would they?
He'd show them! Amid the hanging silence--like a portent it overhung him--he raised the strange weapon and brought it gruntingly down with all the strength of his stout muscles.
* * * * * In the fading light of seven o'clock on that fair summer's evening John McTavish for the hundredth time seized the heavy arms of Sharon Whipple and bent them back and up in the right line.

Then Sharon did the thing faithfully in his own way, which was still, after an hour's trial, not the way of John McTavish.
"Mon, what have I told ye ?" expostulated John.

He had quit calling Sharon Sir-r-r.

Perhaps his r's were tired, and anyway, Sharon called him Sandy, being unable to believe that any Scotchman would not have this for one or another of his names.