"Oh, quite," said the Bish, and Henry toddled back to his practise. It was well that he left us, for the Bish was on the point of an explosion.
"Well!" said he. "The conceited, ungrateful old scoundrel! Got his own game to consider—did you hear that? Just one fair-to-middling score in his whole worthless life, and now he's too swelled up to associate with the fellows who have played with him all these years, stood for his little meannesses, covered up his faults and overlooked his shortcomings! Keener competition, eh? Pah! Would you play with him?"
"Not on a bet!" said I.
On the following Wednesday the Old Guard counted noses and found itself short the star member. Lacking the courage or the decency to inform his friends of his change of programme, Peacock took the line of least resistance and elected to escape them by a late arrival. Sam Totten made several flying trips into the locker room in search of his partner, but he gave up at last, and at one-thirty the Old Guard drove off, a threesome.
At one-thirty-two Henry sneaked into the clubhouse and announced that he was without a match. The news did not create any great furore. All the Class-A foursomes were made up, and, to make matters worse, the Bish had been doing a little quiet but effective missionary work. Henry's advances brought him smack up against a stone wall of polite but definite refusal. The cup winner was left out in the cold.
He finally picked up Uncle George Sawyer, it being a matter of Uncle George or nobody. Uncle George is a twenty-four-handicap man, but only when he is at the very top of his game, and he is deaf as a post, left handed and a confirmed slicer. In addition to these misfortunes Uncle George is blessed with the disposition of a dyspeptic wildcat, and I imagine that Mr. Peacock did not have a pleasant afternoon. The Old Guard pounced on him when he came into the lounging room at five o'clock.
"Hey! Why didn't you say that you'd be late?" demanded Sam Totten. "We'd have waited for you."
"Well, I'll tell you," said Henry—and he looked like a sheep-killing dog surprised with the wool in his teeth—"I'll tell you. The fact of the matter is I—I didn't know just how late I was going to be, and I didn't think it would be fair to you——"
"Apology's accepted," said Jumbo, "but don't let it happen again. And you went and picked on poor old Sawyer too. You—a cup winner—picking on a cripple like that! Henry, where do you expect to go when you die? Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
"We've got it all fixed up to play at San Gabriel next Saturday," put in Peter Miller. "You'll go, of course?"