"There you are," said Jonah.

"Now," said I, "I'm dead certain to top it."

"Well, then, drive more to the right," said Jill. "After all, it's only a game."

"I'll take your word for it," said I.

Of course, I topped the ball, but at the next hole my grey-eyed cousin discovered that our caddie had a puppy in his pocket, so we won easily.

As we made for the club-house—

"Only ten days to Christmas," said Adèle. "Can you believe me?"

"With an effort," said I. "It's almost too hot to be true."

Indeed, it might have been a June morning.

The valley was sleepy beneath the mid-day sun; the slopes of the sheltering foot-hills looked warm and comfortable; naked but unashamed, the woods were smiling; southward, a long flash spoke of the sunlit peaks and the dead march of snow; and there, a league away, grey Pau was basking contentedly, her decent crinoline of villas billowing about her sides, lazily looking down on such a fuss and pother as might have bubbled out of the pot of Revolution, but was, in fact, the hospitable rite daily observed on the arrival of the Paris train.