"I'm sorry John couldn't come with us," Pritchard commented between puffs of his pipe as he swung the car rapidly from the bluestone drive onto the macadam road. "He sticks too close to the grind. A chap needs some sport over the week-end. I'd pass out cold if I didn't get in my eighteen holes Sundays."
Prichard was evidently well known and well liked at the Greenwich Country Club. He had no difficulty in making up a foursome from among the crowd clustered about the first tee. Rodrigo was introduced to a Mr. Bryon and a Mr. Sisson, men of about Pritchard's own age and standing. The latter and his guest teamed against the two other men at a dollar a hole. Rodrigo was quite aware that the eyes of the other three players were critically upon him as he mounted the tee. He made a special effort to drive his first ball as well as possible. He had learned golf at Oxford and was a good player. But he had not hit a ball for months and was uncertain how the lay-off and the strange clubs he was using would affect his game. However, he got off a very respectable drive straight down the fairway and was rewarded by the approbation of his mates.
After the first few holes, in which Rodrigo more than held his own, the other developed a more friendly and natural attitude toward the titled foreigner. Rodrigo, due to his English training, his predilection for Americans like Terhune at Oxford, and his previous visit to the States, together with his unaffectedness and adaptability, had few of the marked unfamiliar characteristics of the Latin. Soon he was accepted on a free and easy footing with the others. He laughed and chaffed with them and had a very good time indeed.
Warren Pritchard took golf too seriously to derive much diversion out of it. The money involved did not mean anything to him, but he was the sort of intensely ambitious young American who always strove his utmost to do even the most trivial things well. He whooped with childish joy at extraordinary good shots by either himself or Rodrigo. At the end of the match, which the Dorning representatives won by a substantial margin, he congratulated the Italian heartily and uttered an enthusiastic tribute to his game. Pritchard seemed more at home with average, go-getting Americans like Bryon and Sisson than he had with the Dornings, Rodrigo thought. On the way back from the links, they post-mortemed the match gayly. Warren Pritchard, who had been inclined to look a little askance at first at his brother-in-law's rather exotic acquaintance, was now ready to concede Rodrigo was very much all right.
Having taken a shower and changed his clothes, Rodrigo came down and pulled up a chair beside Henry Dorning on the front piazza. Alice had at the last moment joined John in his ride over to the Fernalds, it seemed, and Warren was down at the stables talking with the caretaker of the estate.
Henry Dorning remarked pleasantly that John and Alice had not returned as yet but would doubtless be back any moment. "I am somewhat worried about John," the elderly man continued. "He is not so very strong, you know, and he applies himself altogether too steadily to business. He tells me that you are rapidly taking hold and are of great assistance to him already." He looked intently at Rodrigo, as if debating with himself whether or not to make a confidant of him. Then he asked quietly, "You like my son very much, do you not?"
"Very much," Rodrigo said promptly.
"He is a young man of honor and of considerable artistic and business ability besides," said John's father. "Sometimes though, I wonder if he is not missing something in life. For a man of his age, he is singularly ignorant of some things. Of the world outside of his own business and family, for instance. I feel that I can speak freely to you, Rodrigo—if you will permit me to call you that upon such short acquaintance. He admires you very much, and I think you are destined to be even closer friends than you are now."
"I hope so," acknowledged Rodrigo.
"You are a man of the world. You can see for yourself that John's development has been—well, rather one-sided. It is largely my own fault, I admit. He has been reared upon Dorning and Son from the cradle. But there are other things in life. He has no predilection whatever, for instance, for feminine society. Oh, he adores his sister and he mingles with women and girls we know. But he takes no especial interest in any of them except Alice. That is wrong. Women can do a lot toward developing a man. They can do a lot of harm to a man, too, but that has to be risked. A man has not reached real maturity until he has been violently in love at least once. He does not acquire the ability to look upon life as a whole until he has been through that. Of that I am quite convinced."