She surprised the whole company by choosing Sir Patrick.
"Mamma!" cried Blanche.

"What can you be thinking of?
Sir Patrick won't play.

Croquet wasn't discovered in his time." Sir Patrick never allowed "his time" to be made the subject of disparaging remarks by the younger generation without paying the younger generation back in its own coin.
"In _my_ time, my dear," he said to his niece, "people were expected to bring some agreeable quality with them to social meetings of this sort.
In your time you have dispensed with all that.

Here," remarked the old gentleman, taking up a croquet mallet from the table near him, "is one of the qualifications for success in modern society.

And here," he added, taking up a ball, "is another.