“It’s so, though,” said Cutting. He heard the banker in the next room cough ominously. He took up his hat.
“Sit down, sit down!” exclaimed the lawyer. “I want to find out about this. I’ve been doing pretty well, except at the quarry-hole. That beats me. It’s only one hundred and twenty-five yards, so that I’m ashamed to use a driver; and with an iron I go in—I go in too often.”
“Everybody goes in at times,” Cutting remarked encouragingly; “it’s a sort of nerve hazard, you know.”
“I go in more than ‘at times,’” said the lawyer. “Last Saturday I lost sixteen balls there—and my self-respect. That’s too much, isn’t it?”
Cutting looked severely away at the portrait of Chief Justice Marshall. “Yes,” he said; “that is rather often.” The idea of Mr. Heminway profanely filling up the hill quarry with golf-balls appealed to him. “Still,” he went on, “you must pardon me, but I don’t think it could have been because your clubs were too light.”
“Well,” demanded the lawyer, “what do I do that’s wrong?”
Cutting looked him over critically. “Of course I’ve never seen you play,” he said. “I should judge, though, that you hit too hard, for one thing.”
“I suppose I do,” said the lawyer. “I get irritated. It appears so simple.”
“You see,” Cutting continued, “there are three things that you ought always to keep in mind—”