Mary followed the ball’s flight with astonished eyes.
“But this will never do!” she exclaimed. “I can’t possibly start you two up if you’re going to do this sort of thing.”
Rollo blushed.
“I shouldn’t think it would happen again,” he said. “I’ve never done a drive like that before.”
“But it must happen again,” said Mary, firmly. “This is evidently your day. If you don’t get round in under a hundred today, I shall never forgive you.”
Rollo shut his eyes, and his lips moved feverishly. He was registering a vow that, come what might, he would not fail her. A minute later he was holing out in three, one under bogey.
The second hole is the short lake-hole. Bogey is three, and Rollo generally did it in four; for it was his custom not to count any balls he might sink in the water, but to start afresh with the one which happened to get over, and then take three putts. But today something seemed to tell him that he would not require the aid of this ingenious system. As he took his mashie from the bag, he knew that his first shot would soar successfully on to the green.
“Ah, Mary!” he breathed as he swung.
These subtleties are wasted on a worm, if you will pardon the expression, like yourself, who, possibly owing to a defective education, is content to spend life’s springtime rolling wooden balls across a lawn; but I will explain that in altering and shortening his soliloquy at this juncture Rollo had done the very thing any good pro would have recommended. If he had murmured, “Oh, Mary! Mary!” as before he would have overswung. “Ah, Mary!” was exactly right for a half-swing with the mashie. His ball shot up in a beautiful arc, and trickled to within six inches of the hole.
Mary was delighted. There was something about this big, diffident man which had appealed from the first to everything in her that was motherly.
“Marvellous!” she said. “You’ll get a two. Five for the first two holes! Why, you simply must get round in under a hundred now.” She swung, but too lightly; and her ball fell in the water. “I’ll give you this,” she said, without the slightest chagrin, for this girl had a beautiful nature. “Let’s get on to the third. Four up! Why, you’re wonderful!”
And not to weary you with too much detail, I will simply remark that, stimulated by her gentle encouragement, Rollo Podmarsh actually came off the ninth green with a medal score of forty-six for the half-round. A ten on the seventh had spoiled his card to some extent, and a nine on the eighth had not helped, but nevertheless here he was in forty-six, with the easier half of the course before him. He tingled all over—partly because he was wearing the new winter woollies to which I have alluded previously, but principally owing to triumph, elation, and love. He gazed at Mary as Dante might have gazed at Beatrice on one of his particularly sentimental mornings.
Mary uttered an exclamation.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” she exclaimed. “I promised to write last night to Jane Simpson and give her that new formula for knitting jumpers. I think I’ll phone her now from the clubhouse and then it’ll be off my mind. You go on to the tenth, and I’ll join you there.”
Rollo proceeded over the brow of the hill to the tenth tee, and was filling in the time with practice-swings when he heard his name spoken.
“Good gracious, Rollo! I couldn’t believe it was you at first.”
He turned, to see his sister, Mrs. Willoughby, the mother of the child Lettice.
“Hallo!” he said. “When did you get back?”
“Late last night. Why, it’s extraordinary!”
“Hope you had a good time. What’s extraordinary? Listen, Enid. Do you know what I’ve done? Forty-six for the first nine! Forty-six! And holing out every putt.”
“Oh, then that accounts for it.”
“Accounts for what?”
“Why, your looking so pleased with life. I got an idea from Letty, when she wrote to me, that you were at death’s door. Your gloom seems to have made a deep impression on the child. Her letter was full of it.”
Rollo was moved.
“Dear little Letty! She is wonderfully sympathetic.”
“Well, I must be off now,” said Enid Willoughby. “I’m late. Oh, talking of Letty. Don’t children say the funniest things! She wrote in her letter that you were very old and wretched and that she was going to put you out of your misery.”
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Rollo.
“We had to poison poor old Ponto the other day, you know, and poor little Letty was inconsolable till we explained to her that it was really the kindest thing to do, because he was so old and ill. But just imagine her thinking of wanting to end your sufferings!”
“Ha ha!” laughed Rollo. “Ha ha h⸺!”
His voice trailed off into a broken gurgle. Quite suddenly a sinister thought had come to him.
The arrowroot had tasted
