“I have played on so few others,” she told him. “I learned my golf here with King, the professional.”
He took off his cap and handed it to his caddy. He himself was beginning already to look younger. The long blue waves came rippling up the creeks. The salt wind, soft with sunshine, blew in their faces. The marshes on the landward side were mauve with lavender blossom. In the distance, the red-tiled cottages nestled deep among a background of green trees and rising fields.
“This indeed is a land of peace,” he declared. “If I hadn’t to give you quite so many strokes, I should be really enjoying myself.”
“You don’t play like a man who has been living abroad for a great many years,” she remarked. “Tell me about some of the places you have visited?”
“Don’t let us talk seriously,” he begged. “I’ll tell you of them but let it be later on. This morning I feel that the spring air is getting into my head. I have an absurd desire to talk nonsense.”
“So far,” she admitted, “you haven’t been altogether unsuccessful.”
“If you are alluding,” he replied, “to the personal remarks I was emboldened to make on my way here, I can only say that they were excused by their truthfulness.”
“I am not at all sure that you have known me long enough to tell me what colours suit me,” she demurred.
“Then what will you say,” he enquired, “if I admire the angle of that quill in your hat?”
“Don’t do it,” she laughed. “If you continue like this, I may have to go home.”