against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed to be used.'
It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand
silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.
Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens
Committee.
'The hole after this one,' he said, 'used to be a short hole. There was
no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the
Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes, so
now they've tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have
to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch
you get into a sort of No Man's Land, full of rocks and bushes and
crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live
there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging
each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going
to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just
hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it
up!'
Golf, however, is a curious game--a game of fluctuations. One might
have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have
continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he
once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach
the tenth green with an iron-shot, and, though the ball was several
yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-putt and holed
his second for a bogey four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so
that they were all square again.
The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly
a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in
grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives
straight, and found no difficulty in securing fours.
'A little more of this,' said Mitchell, beaming, 'and the Greens
Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work.'
The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, bogey five. Alexander plugged
steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell, whose second
shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick.
He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely-judged
mashie-shot to the edge of the green.
Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty yard
hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the
green, but his third laid the ball dead; while Mitchell, who was on in
two, required three putts.
'That reminds me,' said Alexander, chattily, 'of a story I heard.
Friend calls out to a beginner, 'How are you getting on, old man?' and
the beginner says, 'Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the
last green!''
Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had
made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had
been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in
his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.
There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside
