“Ah, Mary!” he breathed as he swung.
These subtleties are wasted on a worm, if you will pardon the expression, like yourself, who, possibly owing to a defective education, is content to spend life’s springtime rolling wooden balls across a lawn; but I will explain that in altering and shortening his soliloquy at this juncture Rollo had done the very thing any good pro. would have recommended. If he had murmured, “Oh, Mary! Mary!” as before he would have over-swung. “Ah, Mary!” was exactly right for a half-swing with the mashie. His ball shot up in a beautiful arc, and trickled to within six inches of the hole.
Mary was delighted. There was something about this big, diffident man which had appealed from the first to everything in her that was motherly.
“Marvellous!” she said. “You’ll get a two. Five for the first two holes! Why, you simply must get round in under a hundred now.” She swung, but too lightly; and her ball fell in the water. “I’ll give you this,” she said, without the slightest chagrin, for this girl had a beautiful nature. “Let’s get on to the third. Four up! Why, you’re wonderful!”
And not to weary you with too much detail, I will simply remark that, stimulated by her gentle encouragement, Rollo Podmarsh actually came off the ninth green with a medal score of forty-six for the half-round. A ten on the seventh had spoiled his card to some extent, and a nine on the eighth had not helped, but nevertheless here he was in forty-six, with the easier half of the course before him. He tingled all over—partly because he was wearing the new winter woollies to which I have alluded previously, but principally owing to triumph, elation, and love. He gazed at Mary as Dante might have gazed at Beatrice on one of his particularly sentimental mornings.
Mary uttered an exclamation.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” she exclaimed. “I promised to write last night to Jane Simpson and give her that new formula for knitting jumpers. I think I’ll ’phone her now from the club-house and then it’ll be off my mind. You go on to the tenth, and I’ll join you there.”
Rollo proceeded over the brow of the hill to the tenth tee, and was filling in the time with practice-swings when he heard his name spoken.
“Good gracious, Rollo! I couldn’t believe it was you at first.”
He turned to see his sister, Mrs. Willoughby, the mother of the child Lettice.