“Bobby?” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “Isn’t he screamingly funny on the links!”
“He’s a very fine young man,” Tish observed, eying her steadily.
“He has no temperament.”
“He has a good disposition. That’s something.”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted carelessly. “He’s as gentle as a lamb.”
Tish talked it over after she had gone. She said that the girl was all right, but that conceit over her game had ruined her, and that the only cure was for Bobby to learn and then beat her to death in a tournament or something, but that Bobby evidently couldn’t learn, and so that was that. She then fell into one of those deep silences during which her splendid mind covers enormous ranges of thought, and ended by saying something to the effect that if one could use a broom one should be able to do something else.
We closed up the cottage soon after and returned to town.
Now and then we saw Nettie Lynn on the street, and once Tish asked us to dinner and we found Bobby Anderson there. He said he had discovered a place in a department store to practice during the winter, with a net to catch the balls, but that owing to his unfortunate tendencies he had driven a ball into the well of the store, where it had descended four stories and hit a manager on the back. He was bent over bowing to a customer or it would have struck his head and killed him.
“She was there,” he said despondently. “She used to think I was only a plain fool. Now she says I’m dangerous, and that I ought to take out a license for carrying weapons before I pick up a club.”
“I don’t know why you want to marry her,” Tish said in a sharp voice.