"Well," said Archie, "his heart is in the right place anyway."
When you can't think of anything else to say for a man, you can always say that his heart is in the right place. It sounds well, but it doesn't mean anything. Archie proposed that we should let Small go around with us that afternoon. I didn't like the idea, but, of course, I kept mum; the man was Archie's guest.
Small got in bad on the first tee. I knew he would when I saw who was ahead of us—Colonel Jimmy and the chinless boy. Like most elderly mechanical golfers, the Colonel is a stickler for the etiquette of the game—absolute silence and all that sort of thing.
Archie introduced Small to the Colonel and the Colonel introduced us to the chinless boy, who said he was charmed, stepped up on the tee and whacked his ball into the rough.
While the Colonel was teeing up, Small kept moving around and talking in that megaphone voice of his. Colonel Jimmy looked at him rather eloquently a couple of times and finally Small hushed up. The Colonel took his stance, tramped around awhile to get a firm footing, addressed the ball three times, and drew his club back for the swing. Just as it started downward, Small sneezed—one of those sneezes with an Indian war whoop on the end of it—"Aa-chew!" Naturally Colonel Jimmy jumped, took his eye off the ball and topped it into the long grass in front of the tee.
"Take it over," said the chinless boy, who was a sport if nothing else.
"I certainly intend to!" snapped the Colonel, glaring at Small. "You—you spoiled my swing, sir!"
"Quit your kidding, Colonel!" said Small. "How could I spoil your swing?"
"You sneezed behind me!"
Small laughed at the top of his voice. "Haw! Haw! That's rich! Why, I've seen Heinie Zimmerman hit a baseball a mile with thirty thousand people yelling their heads off at him!"