Slowly the light of intelligence dawned in Waddles' eyes. He began to laugh inwardly, quivering like a mould of jelly, but the joke was too big to remain inside him. It burst forth, first in chuckles, then in subdued guffaws, and finally in whoops and yells, and as he whooped he slapped his fat knees and wallowed in his chair.
"Why," he panted, "I saw it all the time—of course I did! It was just your fool way of putting it! The hair of the dog—oh, say, that's rich! Make a note of that Latin thing, Bish. I want to spring it on the Reverend Father Murphy!"
"Certainly—but where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"Me?" said Waddles. "I'm going to do something I've never done before. I'm going to raise a man's handicap from twelve to eighteen!"
He went away, still laughing, and I looked over toward the eighteenth green. Pete Miller was preparing to putt, Sam Totten and Jumbo were standing side by side, and in the background was Henry Peacock, his hands in his pockets, his cap tilted down over his eyes and his lower lip entirely out of control. His caddie was already on the way to the shed with the bag of clubs.
"From twelve handicap to eighteen," said I. "That's more or less of an insult. Think he'll stand for it?"
"He'll stand for anything right now," said the Bish. "Look at him! He's picked up his ball—on the drink hole too. Give him the once over—'mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream!'"
II
As far back as my earliest acquaintance with the royal and ancient game, the Old Guard was an institution of the Yavapai Golf and Country Club—a foursome cemented by years and usage, an association recognised as permanent, a club within the club—four eighteen-handicap men, bound by the ties of habit and hopeless mediocrity. The young golfer improves his game and changes his company, graduating from Class B into Class A; the middle-aged golfer is past improvement, so he learns his limitations, hunts his level and stays there. Peter Miller, Frank Woodson, Henry Peacock and Sam Totten were fixtures in the Grand Amalgamated Order of Dubs, and year in and year out their cards would have averaged something like ninety-seven. They were oftener over the century mark than below it.
Every golf club has a few permanent foursomes, but most of them are held together by common interests outside the course. For instance, we have a bankers' foursome, an insurance foursome and a wholesale-grocery foursome, and the players talk shop between holes. We even have a foursome founded on the ownership of an automobile, a jitney alliance, as Sam Totten calls it; but the Old Guard cannot be explained on any such basis, nor was it a case of like seeking like.