a handkerchief.”
“Permit me,” said Rollo, producing one of her best from his left breast-pocket.
“I wish I had a powder-puff,” said Mary.
“Allow me,” said Rollo. “And your hair has become a little disordered. If I may—” And from the same reservoir he drew a handful of hairpins.
Mary gazed at these exhibits with astonishment.
“But these are mine,” she said.
“Yes. I sneaked them from time to time.”
“But why?”
“Because I loved you,” said Rollo. And in a few moving sentences which I will not trouble you with he went on to elaborate this theme.
Mary listened with her heart full of surging emotions, which I cannot possibly go into if you persist in looking at that damned watch of yours. The scales had fallen from her eyes. She had thought slightingly of this man because he had been a little overcareful of his health, and all the time he had had within him the potentiality of heroism. Something seemed to snap inside her.
“Rollo!” she cried, and flung herself into his arms.
“Mary!” muttered Rollo, gathering her up.
“I told you it was all nonsense,” said Mrs. Willoughby, coming up at this tense moment and going on with the conversation where she had left off. “I’ve just seen Letty, and she said she meant to put you out of your misery but the chemist wouldn’t sell her any poison, so she let it go.”
Rollo disentangled himself from Mary.
“What?” he cried.
Mrs. Willoughby repeated her remarks.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then why did the arrowroot taste rummy?”
“I made inquiries about that. It seems that mother was worried about your taking to smoking, and she found an advertisement in one of the magazines about the Tobacco Habit Cured in Three Days by a secret method without the victim’s knowledge. It was a gentle, safe, agreeable method of eliminating the nicotine poison from the system, strengthening the weakened membranes, and overcoming the craving; so she put some in your arrowroot every night.”
There was a long silence. To Rollo Podmarsh it seemed as though the sun had suddenly begun to shine, the birds to sing, and the grasshoppers to toot. All Nature was one vast substantial smile. Down in the valley by the second hole he caught sight of Wallace Chesney’s Plus Fours gleaming as their owner stooped to play his shot, and it seemed to him that he had never in his life seen anything so lovely.
“Mary,” he said, in a low, vibrant voice, “will you wait here for me? I want to go into the clubhouse for a moment.”
“To change your wet shoes?”
“No!” thundered Rollo. “I’m never going to change my wet shoes again in my life.” He felt in his pocket, and hurled a box of patent pills far into the undergrowth. “But I am going to change my winter woollies. And when I’ve put those dashed barbed-wire entanglements into the clubhouse furnace, I’m going to phone to old Colonel Bodger. I hear his lumbago’s worse than ever. I’m going to fix up a match with him for a shilling a hole. And if I don’t lick the boots off him you can break the engagement!”
“My hero!” murmured Mary.
Rollo kissed her, and with long, resolute steps strode to the clubhouse.
Rodney Fails to Qualify
There was a sound of revelry by night, for the first Saturday in June had arrived and the Golf Club was holding its monthly dance. Fairy lanterns festooned the branches of the chestnut trees on the terrace above the ninth green, and from the big dining-room, cleared now of its tables and chairs, came a muffled slithering of feet and the plaintive sound of saxophones moaning softly like a man who has just missed a short putt. In a basket-chair in the shadows the Oldest Member puffed a cigar and listened, well content. His was the peace of the man who has reached the age when he is no longer expected to dance.
A door opened, and a young man came out of the clubhouse. He stood on the steps with folded arms, gazing to left and right. The Oldest Member, watching him from the darkness, noted that he wore an air of gloom. His brow was furrowed and he had the indefinable look of one who has been smitten in the spiritual solar plexus.
Yes, where all around him was joy, jollity, and song, this young man brooded.
The sound of a high tenor voice, talking rapidly and entertainingly on the subject of modern Russian thought, now intruded itself on the peace of the night. From the farther end of the terrace a girl came into the light of the lanterns, her arm in that of a second young man. She was small and pretty, he tall and intellectual. The light shone on his high forehead and glittered on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. The girl was gazing up at him with reverence and adoration, and at the sight of these twain the youth on the steps appeared to undergo some sort of spasm. His face became contorted and he wobbled. Then, with a gesture of sublime despair, he tripped over the mat and stumbled back into the clubhouse. The couple passed on and disappeared, and the Oldest Member had the night to himself, until the door opened once more and the club’s courteous and efficient secretary trotted down the steps. The scent of the cigar drew him to where the Oldest Member sat, and he dropped into the chair beside him.
“Seen young Ramage tonight?” asked the secretary.
“He was standing on those steps only a moment ago,” replied the Oldest Member. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought perhaps you might have had a talk with him and found out what’s the matter. Can’t think what’s come to him tonight. Nice, civil boy as a rule, but just now, when I was trying to tell him about my short approach on the fifth this afternoon, he was positively abrupt. Gave a sort of hollow gasp and dashed away in the middle of a sentence.”
The Oldest Member sighed.
“You must
