“Did you see my drive, Rodney?”
“—where falls not rain nor hail nor any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly. Eh? Your drive? No, I didn’t.”
Again Jane Packard was aware of that faint, wistful regret. But this was swept away a few moments later in the ecstasy of a perfect iron-shot which plunked her ball nicely on to the green. The last time she had played this hole she had taken seven, for all round the plateau green are sinister sand-bunkers, each beckoning the ball into its hideous depths; and now she was on in two and life was very sweet. Putting was her strong point, so that there was no reason why she should not get a snappy four on one of the nastiest holes on the course. She glowed with a strange emotion as she took her putter, and as she bent over her ball the air seemed filled with soft music.
It was only when she started to concentrate on the line of her putt that this soft music began to bother her. Then, listening, she became aware that it proceeded from Rodney Spelvin. He was standing immediately behind her, humming an old French love-song. It was the sort of old French love-song to which she could have listened for hours in some scented garden under the young May moon, but on the green of the fourth at Mossy Heath it got right in amongst her nerve-centres.
“Rodney, please!”
“Eh?”
Jane found herself wishing that Rodney Spelvin would not say “Eh?” whenever she spoke to him.
“Do you mind not humming?” said Jane. “I want to putt.”
“Putt on, child, putt on,” said Rodney Spelvin, indulgently. “I don’t know what you mean, but, if it makes you happy to putt, putt to your heart’s content.”
Jane bent over her ball again. She had got the line now. She brought back her putter with infinite care.