Young Beck: A Chip of the Old Block (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Young Beck: A Chip of the Old Block

They were good - looking chaps enough, smart, black-haired and black-eyed, rather low - sized, but square-shouldered and as agile as monkeys. It was a revelation to see them run and pass to each other at hockey, and at lawn tennis they made a combination that carried all before it. They seemed to have no separate identity; which was Eddie and which was Freddie Bertram only them selves could tell and they kept the secret.

Their doings and sayings were the talk of the college, but somehow, no one could say why, easy mannered as they were and full of life and fun, the Bertram twins were not generally popular.

The twins were at St. John's College and Beck and I at Cam's, and so it happened that we were at Cambridge about a fortnight before we ran across them. We make a very useful double at tennis, and one of the twins, Eddie or Freddie, I don't know which, seeing us play at the top of our form and win our match, challenged us for a fiver a corner. We took them on and were beaten, three sets to two, every game and every set closely fought. I believe either of us could have beaten either of them singly but they were irresistible together.

The match caused a great sensation. It was agreed that Beck and I were to practise together and play them for double stakes in a fortnight's time. But Beck wouldn't play. At first he was keen enough, but after the first week I could not get him to practise, and at the end of the second he backed out. I could see the twins were riled. When I suggested that we should coax Beck to change his mind they curtly refused.

I saw little or nothing of them after that, and my next falling in with them was a bit exciting.

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