“I feel in my bones, Miss Tish,” he said, “that you will beat her. And I know her; she won’t stand being defeated, especially by——” Here he coughed, and lost the thread of this thought. “I’m going to buy her a horse,” he went on. “I’m very fond of riding.”
He said, however, that it was going to be very hard for him to quarrel with her the evening before the finals.
“I’m too much in love,” he confessed. “Besides, outside of golf we agree on everything—politics, religion, bridge; everything.”
It was then that Tish made one of her deeply understanding comments.
“Married life is going to be very dull for you both,” she said.
It was arranged that in spite of the quarrel he should volunteer to caddie for the champion the day of the strike, and to take a portion of Aggie’s responsibility as to changing the lie of the ball, and so forth. He was not hopeful, however.
“She won’t want me any more than the measles,” he said.
“She can’t very well refuse, before the crowd,” Tish replied.
I pass with brief comment over the early days of the women’s tournament. Mrs. Ostermaier was eliminated the first day with a score of 208, and slapped her caddie on the seventeenth green. Tish turned in only a fair score, and was rather depressed; so much so that she walked in her sleep and wakened Aggie by trying to tee a ball on the end of her—Aggie’s—nose. But the next day she was calm enough, and kept her nerves steady by the simple device of knitting as she followed the ball. The result was what she had expected, and the day of the finals saw only Nettie Lynn and our dear Tish remaining.
All worked out as had been expected. The caddies went on a strike that day, and before the field Nettie was obliged to accept Bobby’s offer to carry her clubs. But he was very gloomy and he brought his troubles to me.