I now know that the book Mr. Rolfs lent me is mere piffle and that, for a man who takes his golf in the right way, a broom or a hairpin is as good as any other tool. I enjoy the game immensely, and find it great sport. Often I come home with fifty golf balls, and my low record is eighteen—but that was a legal holiday and the grass mowers were on vacation. I have so many golf balls in the house already that Isobel talks of having an addition built over the kitchen for storage purposes. As my game has improved I have acquired such dexterity that I can buy balls from the caddies at the rate of four for twenty-five cents. If I practise regularly I believe I shall in time reach a point where I can buy balls for five cents each. By holes, my best score is thirty-eight balls, made at the eighth hole on July 6th, from the red-headed caddy and the fat mowing man. My low score is one ball, made August 16th, at the first hole. I never make a large score there, as it is near the club house and the caddies are afraid of the Board of Governors.
When golf is taken rightly it arouses the instincts of the chase in a man, and I now feel the same joy in running down a caddy and bargaining for found balls that others feel in hunting wild animals. Golf, taken thus, is a splendid game.
And I have found that if I use my putter only, and knock the ball but a few yards each stroke, there is no need of losing a ball from one end of the year to the other. But even then one must remember the cardinal rule of all golfers—“Keep the eye on the ball.”
XI. MY DOMESTICATED AUTOMOBILE
I HAVE said that I left Millington happily working over his automobile when I went to the Country Club that afternoon. When I returned he was still working away, and so well had I wrecked his car that all his repairing seemed to have made not the slightest impression on it.
“John,” he said brightly, “you certainly did a good job. It will be months before I have this car in any shape at all, I am sure. It is going to take all my spare time, too. I mean to set my alarm clock for three, and get up at that time every morning.”
It is always a pleasure for me to see another man happy, and at half-past two the next morning I was waiting for Millington at his garage door. He came out of his house promptly at three, and joked merrily as he unlocked the garage door, but the moment he threw open the door his face fell. And well it might! The dished wheel had been trued, the crushed hood had been straightened and painted, a new cylinder had replaced the cracked one, and when Millington tried the engine it ran without a sound except that of a perfectly working piece of well-adjusted machinery. Millington got out of the car and stood staring at the motor, and suddenly, with a low cry of anguish, he fell over backward as stiff as a log. Mrs. Millington and I managed to carry him to bed, and then I returned to the garage. I was not going to desert Millington in his adversity.
After the doctor had visited the house, Mrs. Millington came out and told me that her husband was still in a comatose state, due to brain-shock, but that he kept repeating “Sell it! Sell it!” over and over, and she was sure he must mean the car. She said that while she would hate to part with the car, and give up all the pleasure of starting for Port Lafayette, she feared for her husband's reason if he continued to receive such shocks, and she was willing to sacrifice the car at a very low price, if I insisted. She said I had not, like Millington, become habituated to hearing a knocking in the engine, so' the lack of it would not bother me, and that owning a car that repaired itself over night was what most automobile owners would call a golden opportunity.