"I think I'll have to take it up. You make it sound very attractive."
"The Scotch owed us something good," said Evelyn; "they gave us oatmeal for breakfast, and made life unendurable to that extent. But we can forgive them if they take us out of doors and get us away from offices and houses. Our western business men are incorrigible, though. The farther west you go, the more hours a day men put into business."
Evelyn soon sent Wheaton to bring Mrs. Whipple and Annie Warren, who were stranded in a corner, and they became spectators of the pranks of some of the others, who had now gathered about the piano, where Captain Wheelock had undertaken to lead in the singing of popular airs. The singers were not taking their efforts very seriously. All knew some of the words of "Annie Carroll," but none knew all, so that their efforts were marked by scattering good-will rather than by unanimity of knowledge. When one lost the words and broke down, they all laughed in derision. Mabel and Raridan had joined the circle, and Warry entered into the tentative singing with the spirit he always brought to any occasion. Mabel, who imported all the new songs from New York, gave "Don't Throw Snowballs at the Soda-water Man" as a solo, and did it well—almost too well. Occasionally one of the group at the piano turned to demand that those who lingered by the fireside join in the singing, but Wheaton was shy of this hilarity, and was comfortable in his belief that Evelyn was showing a preference for him in electing to remain aloof. He did not understand that her evident preference was due to a feeling that he was older than the rest and too stiff and formal for their frivolity.
Mrs. Whipple made little effort to talk to Wheaton, though she occasionally threw out some comment on the singers to Evelyn. Wheaton did not amuse Mrs. Whipple. He had only lately dawned on her horizon, and she had already appraised him and filed her impression away in her memory. He was not, she had determined, a complex character; she knew, as perfectly as if he had made a full confession of himself to her, his new ambitions, his increasing conceit and belief in himself. She had been more successful in preventing marriages than in effecting them, and she sat watching him with a quizzical expression in her eyes; for there might be danger in him for this girl, though it had not appeared. But when her eyes rested on Evelyn she seemed to find an answer that allayed her fears; Evelyn was hardly a girl that would need guardianship. As the noise from the group at the piano rose to the crescendo at which it broke into laughing discord, Evelyn met suddenly the gaze with which this old friend had been regarding her, and gave back a nod and smile that were in themselves unconsciously reassuring.
Some one suggested presently that if they were to drive home in the moonlight they should be going; and the coach soon swung away from the door into the moon's floodtide. The wind was still, as if in awe of the lighted world. The town lay far below in a white pool. Mabel again took the reins, and as the coach rumbled and crunched over the road, light hearts had recourse to song; but even the singing was subdued, and the trumpeter's note failed miserably when the horses' hoofs struck smartly on the streets of the town.
CHAPTER XVI THE LADY AND THE BUNKER
The afternoon invited the eyes to far, blue horizons, and as Evelyn stood up and shook loosely in her hand the sand she had taken from the box, she contemplated the hazy distances with satisfaction before bending to make her tee. Her visitors had left; Grant had gone east to school, and she was driven in upon herself for amusement. Her movements were lithe and swift, and when once the ball had been placed in position there were only two points of interest for her in the landscape—the ball itself and the first green. The driver was a part of herself, and she stepped back and swung it to freshen her memory of its characteristics. The caddy watched her in silent joy; these were not the fussy preliminaries that he had been used to in young ladies who played on the Country Club links; he kept one eye on the player and backed off down the course. The sleeves of her crimson flannel shirt-waist were turned up at the wrists; the loose end of her cravat fluttered in the soft wind, that was like a breath of mid-May. She addressed the ball, standing but slightly bent above it and glancing swiftly from tee to target, then swung with the certainty and ease of the natural golf player. Her first ball was a slice, but it fell seventy-five yards down the course; she altered her position slightly and tried again, but she did not hit the ball squarely, and it went bounding over the grass. At the third attempt her ball was caught fairly and sped straight down the course at a level not higher than her head. The caddy trotted to where it lay; it was on a line with the one hundred and fifty yard mark. The player motioned him to get the other balls. She had begun her game.
The fever was as yet in its incipient stage in Clarkson; players were few; the greens were poorly kept, and there were bramble patches along the course which were of material benefit to the golf ball makers. But it was better than nothing, John Saxton said to himself this bright October afternoon, as he stood at the first tee, listening to the cheerful discourse of his caddy, who lingered to study the equipment of a visitor whom he had not served before.