her teeth.
“I’m going to get that ball on to the green if I have to stay here all night,” she said.
Rodney Spelvin looked at her and shuddered. Was this the quiet, dreamy girl he had loved? This Maenad? Her hair was lying in damp wisps about her face, her eyes were shining with an unearthly light.
“No, but really—” he faltered.
Jane stamped her foot.
“What are you making all this fuss about, Rodney?” she snapped. “Where is it, William?”
“There she dips,” said William, “Playing six.”
“Playing six.”
“Let her go!” said William.
“Let her go it is!” said Jane.
A perfect understanding seemed to prevail between these two.
Splash!
The woman on the bank looked up from her Vardon as Rodney Spelvin’s agonized scream rent the air. She saw a boat upon the water, a man rowing the boat, another man, hatless, gesticulating in the stern, a girl beating the water with a niblick. She nodded placidly and understandingly. A niblick was the club she would have used herself in such circumstances. Everything appeared to her entirely regular and orthodox. She resumed her book.
Splash!
“Playing fifteen,” said Jane.
“Fifteen is right,” said William Bates.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
“Playing forty-four.”
“Forty-four is correct.”
Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash!
“Eighty-three?” said Jane, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“No. Only eighty-two,” said William Bates.
“Where is it?”
“There she drifts.”
A dripping figure rose violently in the stern of the boat, spouting water like a public fountain. For what seemed to him like an eternity Rodney Spelvin had ducked and spluttered and writhed, and now it came to him abruptly that he was through. He bounded from his seat, and at the same time Jane swung with all the force of her supple body. There was a splash beside which all the other splashes had been as nothing. The boat overturned and went drifting away. Three bodies plunged into the stream. Three heads emerged from the water.
The woman on the bank looked absently in their direction. Then she resumed her book.
“It’s all right,” said William Bates, contentedly. “We’re in our depth.”
“My bag!” cried Jane. “My bag of clubs!”
“Must have sunk,” said William.
“Rodney,” said Jane, “my bag of clubs is at the bottom somewhere. Dive under and swim about and try to find it.”
“It’s bound to be around somewhere,” said William Bates, encouragingly.
Rodney Spelvin drew himself up to his full height. It was not an easy thing to do, for it was muddy where he stood, but he did it.
“Damn your bag of clubs!” he bellowed, lost to all shame. “I’m going home!”
With painful steps, tripping from time to time and vanishing beneath the surface, he sloshed to the shore. For a moment he paused on the bank, silhouetted against the summer sky, then he was gone.
Jane Packard and William Bates watched him go with amazed eyes.
“I never would have dreamed,” said Jane, dazedly, “that he was that sort of man.”
“A bad lot,” said William Bates.
“The sort of man to be upset by the merest trifle!”
“Must have a naturally bad disposition,” said William Bates.
“Why, if a little thing like this could make him so rude and brutal and horrid, it wouldn’t be safe to marry him!”
“Taking a big chance,” agreed William Bates. “Sort of fellow who would poison the cat’s milk and kick the baby in the face.” He took a deep breath and disappeared. “Here are your clubs, old girl,” he said, coming to the surface again. “Only wanted a bit of looking for.”
“Oh, William,” said Jane, “you are the most wonderful man on earth!”
“Would you go so far as that?” said William.
“I was mad, mad, ever to get engaged to that brute!”
“Now there,” said William Bates, removing an eel from his left breast-pocket, “I’m absolutely with you. Thought so all along, but didn’t like to say so. What I mean is, a girl like you—keen on golf and all that sort of thing—ought to marry a chap like me—keen on golf and everything of that description.”
“William,” cried Jane, passionately, detaching a newt from her right ear, “I will!”
“Silly nonsense, when you come right down to it, your marrying a fellow who doesn’t play golf. Nothing in it.”
“I’ll break off the engagement the moment I get home.”
“You couldn’t make a sounder move, old girl.”
“William!”
“Jane!”
The woman on the bank, glancing up as she turned a page, saw a man and a girl embracing, up to their waists in water. It seemed to have nothing to do with her. She resumed her book.
Jane looked lovingly into William’s eyes.
“William,” she said, “I think I have loved you all my life.”
“Jane,” said William, “I’m dashed sure I’ve loved you all my life. Meant to tell you so a dozen times, but something always seemed to come up.”
“William,” said Jane, “you’re an angel and a darling. Where’s the ball?”
“There she pops.”
“Playing eighty-four?”
“Eighty-four it is,” said William. “Slow back, keep your eye on the ball, and don’t press.”
The woman on the bank began Chapter Twenty-five.
Jane Gets Off the Fairway
The side-door leading into the smoking-room opened, and the golf club’s popular and energetic secretary came trotting down the steps on to the terrace above the ninth green. As he reached the gravel, a wandering puff of wind blew the door to with a sharp report, and the Oldest Member, who had been dozing in a chair over his Wodehouse on the Niblick, unclosed his eyes, blinking in the strong light. He perceived the secretary skimming to and fro like a questing dog.
“You have lost something?” he inquired, courteously.
“Yes, a book. I wish,” said the secretary, annoyed, “that people would leave things alone. You haven’t seen a novel called The Man with the Missing Eyeball anywhere about, have you? I’ll swear I left it on one of these seats when I went in to lunch.”
“You are better without it,” said the sage, with a touch of austerity. “I do not approve of these trashy works of fiction. How much more profitably would your time be spent in mastering the contents of such a volume as I hold in my hand! This is
