"That was splendid, Mr. Smith!" she declared, as my ball stopped rolling, more than two hundred yards away. "I know that my poor little game will bore you to death, but you invited this calamity."
"I only wish that—that I——" and then I stopped in time to keep from saying something foolish.
"Well?" she said, a smile hovering on her lips.
"I only wish that I could drive as far as that every time," I continued, "and—and that you could drive twice as far."
"What an absurd wish!" declared Miss Harding.
It was worse than absurd; it was stupid! Imagine a woman driving a ball four hundred yards! I would never dare marry such a woman, and I came near making some idiotic remark to that effect, but luckily at that moment we came to her ball. I selected the proper club for her, jabbered something about how to play the shot, and thus got safely out of an awkward situation.
At my suggestion we were playing without caddies. There are times when these little terrors take all of the romance out of a situation, and I did not wish to be bothered with them.
On her fourth shot Miss Harding landed her ball in the brook, and it took quite a time to find it. While we were looking for it Boyd and LaHume arrived on the tee, and I motioned them to drive ahead.
I have seen this brook a thousand times. It was my greatest source of amusement and mischief when a boy, but never until this afternoon did I observe its perfect beauty. Heretofore it has been no more nor less than a ribbon of water with weed-lined banks and tall rushes, into which a poor player is likely to drive a ball and lose one or more strokes. It is one of our "natural hazards," and I have thought no more of it than I would of the cushion on a billiard table.
I shall never cross that brook again without thinking of her face as I saw it mirrored in the shadows of the old stone bridge. The reflection was framed with delicate interfacings of water cress, while in the bed of the stream the smooth pebbles gleamed like pearls. The pointed reeds nodded and waved in the gentle breeze.