'but when he foolishly comes out in quite a strong east wind without
his liver-pad----'
'Little Tinky-Ting don't need no liver-pad, he don't,' said Mrs. Luella
Mainprice Jopp, addressing the animal in her arms, 'because he was his
muzzer's pet, he was.'
I was standing quite near to Vincent Jopp, and at this moment I saw a
bead of perspiration spring out on his forehead, and into his steely
eyes there came a positively hunted look. I could understand and
sympathize. Napoleon himself would have wilted if he had found himself
in the midst of a trio of females, one talking baby-talk, another
fussing about his health, and the third making derogatory observations
on his lower limbs. Vincent Jopp was becoming unstrung.
'May as well be starting, shall we?'
It was Jopp's opponent who spoke. There was a strange, set look on his
face--the look of a man whose back is against the wall. Ten down on the
morning's round, he had drawn on his reserves of courage and was
determined to meet the inevitable bravely.
Vincent Jopp nodded absently, then turned to me.
'Keep those women away from me,' he whispered tensely. 'They'll put me
off my stroke!'
'Put you off your stroke!' I exclaimed, incredulously.
'Yes, me! How the deuce can I concentrate, with people babbling about
liver-pads, and--and knickerbockers all round me? Keep them away!'
He started to address his ball, and there was a weak uncertainty in the
way he did it that prepared me for what was to come. His club rose,
wavered, fell; and the ball, badly topped, trickled two feet and sank
into a cuppy lie.
'Is that good or bad?' inquired Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp.
A sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other competitor in
the final. He swung with renewed vigour. His ball sang through the air,
and lay within chip-shot distance of the green.
'At the very least,' said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, 'I hope, Vincent,
that you are wearing flannel next your skin.'
I heard Jopp give a stifled groan as he took his spoon from the bag. He
made a gallant effort to retrieve the lost ground, but the ball struck
a stone and bounded away into the long grass to the side of the green.
His opponent won the hole.
We moved to the second tee.
'Now, that young man,' said Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, indicating her late
husband's blushing antagonist, 'is quite right to wear knickerbockers.
He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown you
that you----'
'I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent,' said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,
solicitously. 'You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in your
eyes.'
'Muzzer's pet got little buttons of eyes, that don't never have no wild
gleam in zem because he's muzzer's own darling, he was!' said Mrs.
Luella Mainprice Jopp.
A hollow groan escaped Vincent Jopp's ashen lips.
I need not recount the play hole by hole, I think. There are some
