The game had been very level, but, on the whole, Kooringal felt its star in the ascendant. So far, indeed, the match was a tie, but there was good cause for the visitors’ comfortable feeling of security, for the Merriwa pair for the finals were not seriously considered as champions. Their place in the team was due only to the fact that Merriwa was short of tennis players. Now they had to meet the Kooringal cracks, a year older, and winners on many a hard-foughten field. It was small wonder if the Merriwiggians settled themselves to watch the finals with hearts inclined to sink.
They felt rather worse at the end of the first sett, and through their ranks ran a feeling of “I-told-you-so!” Jean and Josephine Weston, their players, had shown from the first that they were oppressed by the magnitude of their task. They played carefully, without any dash, afraid to take any liberties with the tall pair across the net, who seemed so huge and so confident. By luck, rather than by play, they had managed to win four games to six: that it was luck no one knew more clearly than Jean and Jo. They exchanged depressed looks when “Game and sett!” was called at the end. It had been a “love” game, thanks to the appalling series of balls Eva Severne had served: unplayable, malevolent streaks of grey light, which had merely touched the ground in the extreme corners of their courts before disappearing into the landscape. Jean and Jo had “swiped” at them unavailingly; useful exercise, but in no way affecting the balls.
“We’re not going to be even amusement to them!” Jean remarked, as they crossed over to change ends. “Isn’t it perfectly awful, Jo! And I never tried so hard in my life!”
“Neither did I,” Jo answered. “And, of course, the more I try, the worse I play. Look here, Jean, it isn’t a bit of use trying—to play a careful game, I mean. This isn’t a time to be careful. I’m going to be desperate!”
“Oh, are you?” Jean met her twin’s eyes with an answering flash. “Well, I suppose the only thing is to be desperate too. We’ll just slog.”
“Right! And there’s another thing—Mona Burton isn’t playing nearly as well as that terrible Severne girl. She’s muffed a good few balls.”
“That’s why the sett was 6-4!” said Jean drily. “Well, we’ll give her all we can. Your serve, Jo—slog them in!”