On paper, this was just the sort of hole that Elsie should have won from Pip. But in practice the conditions were even. Pip's Herculean wrists made it possible for him to force the ball up to the necessary height with a half-mashie-shot, but for Elsie the task involved a full swing—and to keep your ball under absolute control in such circumstances is about the most difficult shot in golf. Pip's approaching was at its worst unspeakable, but on this occasion he was at his best. The ball sailed grandly into the air and dropped in a reassuringly perpendicular fashion into the Crater. Elsie's effort was almost as good, though her ball curled slightly to the left before dropping.
They tramped up the long flight of wooden steps which facilitated the ascent to the summit with bated breath. A glance at the green would decide the match.
Elsie reached the top first. Pip heard her give a little gasp.
One ball, new, white, and glistening, lay on the green ten or twelve yards from the hole. The other was nowhere to be seen.
"Whose ball, I wonder?" said Pip calmly.
They stooped together and examined the ball as it lay on the green. So close were they that Pip was conscious of a flutter that passed through Elsie's body.
The ball was a "Springvale Kite."
Pip maintained an absolutely unmoved countenance. The ball was his, and so, unless a miracle intervened, was the hole. And the match. And—Elsie!
But that mysterious quality which, for want of a better name, we call "sportsmanship," under whose benign influence we learn to win with equanimity and lose with cheerfulness, prevented him from so much as turning an eye upon his beaten opponent. He merely remarked briskly—
"We must find your pill, Elsie. It can't be far off."