"This is the first half we'll have had," he said, as he stood over the hole waiting for Elsie to putt.
"Wait a little," said Elsie.
She took the line of her putt with great care, and allowing nicely for the undulations of the green, just found the hole, and again took the lead, having won the hole in two to Pip's three.
"Don't talk to me any more about flukes," remarked Pip severely as he replaced the flag.
"I won't," retorted Elsie, "if you won't talk to me about halves."
Pip made no mistake at the next two holes, the sixth and seventh. Both were long and straight, and, though Elsie drove as sturdily as ever, Pip's determined slogging brought him to the green before her each time, and at the seventh hole he stood one up.
The next hole was uneventful. The course here ran straight along the edge of the shore, with the sea on their right. Pip, unmindful of the necessity for straightness, hit out with his usual blind ferocity, and was rewarded by seeing his comparatively new Haskell fly off in a determined and ambitious effort to reach the coast of Norway.
"The sea," remarked Elsie calmly, "is out of bounds. You drop another and lose distance."
With the advantage derived from Pip's mishap, Elsie just won the hole. The next, the ninth (the eighteenth and last if they had started from the first tee), a dull and goose-greeny affair, as most home-holes are, was halved, and the match stood "all square at the turn."
They sat down for a moment on a club-house seat on their way to the first tee proper, to begin the second half of their round.