"Aw, mister, you know me!"
"The mashie would be my pick!"
"Who ast you to pick anything, Dago? You ain't got an old brass putter there, have you, sir? All my life I been wantin' a brass putter."
"Gimme the one that's left over?" "Quitcha shovin', there! That's a mighty fine cleek. Wisht I had it!"
In less time than it takes to tell it the bag was empty. The entire collection of golfing instruments, representing the careful and discriminating accumulation of years, passed into new hands. Everybody knows that no two golf clubs are exactly alike, and that a favourite, once lost or broken, can never be replaced. A perfect club possesses something more than proper weight and balance; it has personality and is, therefore, not to be picked up every day in the week. The driver, the spoon, the cleek, the heavy mid-iron, the jigger, the mashie, the scarred old niblick, the two putters—everything was swept away in one wild spasm of renunciation; and if it hurt Coyne to part with these old friends he bore the pain like a Spartan. "Well, I guess that'll be all," said he at length.
"Mr. Coyne," said Butch, who had been practising imaginary approach shots with the light mid-iron, "you wouldn't care if I had about an inch taken off this shaft, would you? It's a little too long for me."
"Cut a foot off it if you like."
"I just wanted to know," said Butch apologetically. "Lots of people say they're going to quit; but——"
"It isn't a case of going to quit with me," said Coyne. "I have quit! You can make kindling wood out of that shaft if you like."
Then, with the empty bag under his arm, and his bridges aflame behind him, he marched back to the clubhouse, his chin a bit higher in the air than was absolutely necessary.