“I’ll be thirty yards behind, with the crowd, won’t I?” Aggie asked.
“You will be beside her,” Tish replied solemnly. “On the day of the finals the caddies will go on a strike, and I shall insist that a strange caddie will spoil my game, and ask for you.”
It appeared that I was to do nothing save to engage Mr. McNab in conversation at certain times and thus distract his attention, the signal for this being Tish placing her right hand in her trousers pocket. For a sneeze from Aggie the signal was Tish coughing once.
“At all times, Aggie,” she finished, “I shall expect you to keep ahead of us, and as near Nettie Lynn’s ball as possible. The undulating nature of the ground is in our favor, and will make it possible now and then for you to move it into a less favorable position. If at the fourteenth hole you can kick it into the creek it will be very helpful.”
Aggie was then rehearsed in the signals, and did very well indeed.
Mr. McNab was an occasional visitor those days. He was watching Tish’s game with interest.
“Ye’ll never beat the champion, ma’m,” he would say, “but ye take the game o’ gowf as it should be taken, wi’ humility and prayer.”
More than once he referred to Bobby Anderson, saying that he was the only complete failure of his experience, and that given a proper chance he would make a golfer of him yet.
“The mon has aye the build of a gowfer,” he would say wistfully.
It is tragic now to remember that incident of the day before the opening of the tournament, when Bobby came to our cottage and we all ceremoniously proceeded to the end of the dock and flung his various clubs, shoes, balls, cap and bag into the lake, and then ate a picnic supper on the shore. When the moon came up he talked of the future in glowing terms.