“Get your clubs and let’s go around the nine hole course,” he suggested. “It will do you good.”
“No thanks,” Marston drawled. “I never by any chance enjoy doing the things that are good for me, and you know I hate golf. Toddle along, Brose, and I’ll wait here until somebody comes around that has a sensible idea of amusement.”
Stovebridge shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
“Well, I’ll have to do it alone, then,” he said as he started for the dressing room for his clubs.
When he returned, a few minutes later, Jim Hanlon had disappeared.
“Aren’t you going to take a caddy?” Marston inquired as his friend crossed the drive to the first tee.
“No; I’ve only got a few clubs. I can manage without one.”
Marston watched him drive off with a tolerant smile, and when Stovebridge had disappeared over a knoll, he got up and lounged through the reception hall to the buffet.
Stovebridge was not playing in good form at all. He drove wretchedly, his brassy shots were impossible, and even his putting worse than he had ever known it to be before. Consequently by the time he had holed in at the fifth green with a score greater by fourteen than ever before, he was in a furious rage and cursed the clubs, the balls, the course—everything but himself.
With an effort he pulled himself together and made a fair drive from the fifth tee. The course was rather winding and along one side was a thick wood, which had been left quite untouched when the links were laid out.