“I was afraid you’d slip into the pond,” said the Professor.
“I didn’t,” said the Captain.
“!”
“I just got in to see how deep it was and cool my feet—I hate warm feet.”
He lost that hole but he felt a better golfer now, his anger he thought was warming him up so that he would presently begin to make strokes by instinct, and do remarkable things unawares. After all there is something in the phrase “getting one’s blood up.” If only the Professor wouldn’t dally so with his ball and let one’s blood get down again. Tap!—the Professor’s ball went soaring. Now for it. The Captain addressed himself to his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote and topped the ball.
The least one could expect was a sympathetic silence. But the Professor thought fit to improve the occasion.
“You’ll never drive,” said the Professor; “you’ll never drive with that irritable jerk in the middle of the stroke. You might just as well smack the ball without raising your club. If you think—”
The Captain lost his self-control altogether.
“Look here,” he said, “if you think that I care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you think that I really want to win and do well at this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game—.”
He paused on the verge of ungentlemanly language.