CHAPTER V
THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS
“After all,” said the young man, “golf is only a game.”
He spoke bitterly and with the air of one who has been following a train of thought. He had come into the smoking-room of the club-house in low spirits at the dusky close of a November evening, and for some minutes had been sitting, silent and moody, staring at the log fire.
“Merely a pastime,” said the young man.
The Oldest Member, nodding in his arm-chair, stiffened with horror, and glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure that none of the waiters had heard these terrible words.
“Can this be George William Pennefather speaking!” he said, reproachfully. “My boy, you are not yourself.”
The young man flushed a little beneath his tan: for he had had a good upbringing and was not bad at heart.
“Perhaps I ought not to have gone quite so far as that,” he admitted. “I was only thinking that a fellow’s got no right, just because he happens to have come on a bit in his form lately, to treat a fellow as if a fellow was a leper or something.”
The Oldest Member’s face cleared, and he breathed a relieved sigh.
“Ah! I see,” he said. “You spoke hastily and in a sudden fit of pique because something upset you out on the links to-day. Tell me all. Let me see, you were playing with Nathaniel Frisby this afternoon, were you not? I gather that he beat you.”