“That’s just what you’re not doing,” he said smartly. “Lemme show you.”
Tish said afterwards that it was purely an accident, for he broke every rule of stance and so on, but before she realized his intention he had taken the club from her hand and sent the ball entirely out of sight.
“That’s the way,” he said. “Whale ’em!”
But recently her attitude to him had changed. She would bring him in and give him cake and ginger ale, and she paid him far too much. When Hannah showed her disapproval he made faces at her behind Tish’s back, and once he actually put his thumb to his nose. To every remonstrance Tish made but one reply.
“Develop the larger viewpoint,” she would observe, “and remember this: I do nothing without a purpose.”
“Then stop him making snoots at me,” said Hannah. “I’ll poison him, that’s what I’ll do.”
Thus our days went on. The hours of light Tish spent on the links. In the evenings her busy fingers were not idle, for she was making herself some knickerbockers from an old pair of trousers which Charlie Sands had left at the cottage, cutting them off below the knee and inserting elastic in the hem, while Aggie and I, by the shade of our lamp, knitted each a long woolen stocking to complete the outfit.
It was on such an evening that Tish finally revealed her plan, that plan which has caused so much unfavorable comment since. The best answer to that criticism is Tish’s own statement to us that night.
“Frankly,” she admitted, “the girl can beat me. But if she does she will continue on her headstrong way, strewing unhappiness hither and yon. She must not win!”
Briefly the plan she outlined was based on the undermining of Nettie’s morale. Thus, Aggie sneezes during the hay-fever season at the mere sight of a sunflower. She was to keep one in her pocket, and at a signal from Tish was to sniff at it, holding back the resultant sneeze, however, until the champion was about to drive.