'We were!'
'We mustn't run a risk like that again.'
'Never again!'
'I think we had better take up golf really seriously. It will keep us
out of mischief.'
'You're quite right. We ought to do our four rounds a day regularly.'
'In spring, summer, and autumn. And in winter it would be rash not to
practise most of the day at one of those indoor schools.'
'We ought to be safe that way.'
'Peter, old man,' said James, 'I've been meaning to speak to you about
it for some time. I've got Sandy MacBean's new book, and I think you
ought to read it. It is full of helpful hints.'
'James!'
'Peter!'
Silently the two men clasped hands. James Todd and Peter Willard were
themselves again.
* * * * *
And so (said the Oldest Member) we come back to our original
starting-point--to wit, that, while there is nothing to be said
definitely against love, your golfer should be extremely careful how he
indulges in it. It may improve his game or it may not. But, if he finds
that there is any danger that it may not--if the object of his
affections is not the kind of girl who will listen to him with cheerful
sympathy through the long evenings, while he tells her, illustrating
stance and grip and swing with the kitchen poker, each detail of the
day's round--then, I say unhesitatingly, he had better leave it alone.
Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there
are higher, nobler things than love. A woman is only a woman, but a
hefty drive is a slosh.
3
A Mixed Threesome
It was the holiday season, and during the holidays the Greens
Committees have decided that the payment of twenty guineas shall
entitle fathers of families not only to infest the course themselves,
but also to decant their nearest and dearest upon it in whatever
quantity they please. All over the links, in consequence, happy,
laughing groups of children had broken out like a rash. A wan-faced
adult, who had been held up for ten minutes while a drove of issue
quarrelled over whether little Claude had taken two hundred or two
hundred and twenty approach shots to reach the ninth green sank into a
seat beside the Oldest Member.
'What luck?' inquired the Sage.
'None to speak of,' returned the other, moodily. 'I thought I had
bagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but he
ducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling their
hoops in the road. Golf is a game for grownups. How can a fellow play,
with a platoon of progeny blocking him at every hole?'
The Oldest Member shook his head. He could not subscribe to these
sentiments.
No doubt (said the Oldest Member) the summer golf-child is, from the
point of view of the player who likes to get round the course in a
