"They told me that you were a confirmed woman hater, and that nothing so
exasperated you as to be compelled to play with a girl who was a novice.
I wished to see if it were true. You are not a woman hater; are you,
Jacques Henri?"
"No longer!" I declared.
"And you take back all the mean things you wrote about us in your diary?"
"Every word of it, Sweetheart!"
"Oh, Jack; I thought I should die of laughter when I drove those eight new balls in the pond. And when you never said a cross word, and smiled and tried to encourage me, then I suspected that you loved me."
"I wouldn't have cared if you had driven me into the pond," I said, and then I missed my fourth brassie.
Two weeks from that day there was a double wedding in the fine old drawing room of Marwick Mansion. From the wedding feast which followed cablegrams went to our friends in Woodvale, also one to Mr. James Bishop, farmer near Woodvale, informing him that sometime next season all of us, including the "hired man," would be with him for dinner and another dance in the new red barn.
We have been cruising in the Mediterranean, and now are anchored in the beautiful Bay of Naples. Mr. Harding has been pacing the deck and gazing at the smoke-wreathed crest of Vesuvius.
[Illustration: "I believe I can carry it">[
"Jack," he has just remarked, "that is quite a bunker, but with a little more practice I believe I can carry it."