So Hobbs tried again.  And that is how it came about that at tea-time a telegraph-boy brought me the bewildering message:  “Mr. Lockwood, The Nook, Monk’s Langford.  Sir, am I Hobbs?  Hobbs.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lovers’ quarrels.

John Bull (to France).  “Wonderful how A little Storm in A tea-pot brings
out the flavour!”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Outside the radius.

Strong Man. “NOW THEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, KIND APPRECIATION, IF YOU PLEASE.  YOU SHORLY DON’T EXPECT A GENUINE WEST-END PERFORMER TO ’ALF KILL ’ISSELF IN THE SUBUBS FOR FOURPENCE?”]

* * * * *

BRIDGE NOTES.

(With acknowledgments to several contemporaries.)

It would, I feel, be but fair to the great Bridge-playing public to preface these few notes with a word of warning against the writers whom I find to my regret affecting to speak with authority on this subject in other periodicals.  Until, as in the kindred profession of Medicine, it is impossible to practise without a Bridge degree, nothing can be done to prevent these quacks from laying down the law.  All I can do for the present is to point out that there is only one writer who can speak not merely with authority, but with infallibility, upon all matters pertaining to our national game.

In this the eighth instalment of my series on Auction etiquette, I should like to urge once more upon the young Bridge-player the importance of playing quickly.  And this because yet another case has come under my notice in which much trouble might have been avoided by doing so.  In this case A. took seven minutes to decide whether to play the King or the Knave, which, especially as the Queen had already been played, was, I consider, far too long.  Y., the declarer, sitting on A.’s left, certainly found it so, for towards the end of the seventh minute he dropped off to sleep and his cards fell forward face upward on the table.  Dummy having gone away in search of liquid refreshment, A. and his partner B. then played out the hand as they liked and then roused Y. to inform him that, instead of making game, he had lost three hundred above.

Now, A. and B. were strictly within the rules of Auction Bridge in acting as they did.  There is no legal time limit for players, as there is at cricket.  But it would have been more tactful had they roused Y. at once, that he might see what they were doing with his cards.