The young man’s jaw fell a couple of notches.
“I had no idea it was so late,” he bleated. “I ought to be—”
“—of a man who played for really high stakes—”
“I promised to—”
“—I will tell it to you,” said the Sage.
“Look here,” said the young man, sullenly, “it isn’t one of those stories about two men who fall in love with the same girl and play a match to decide which is to marry her, is it? Because if so—”
“The stake to which I allude,” said the Oldest Member, “was something far higher and bigger than a woman’s love. Shall I proceed?”
“All right,” said the young man, resignedly. “Snap into it.”
It has been well said—I think by the man who wrote the sub-titles for “Cage-Birds of Society” (began the Oldest Member)—that wealth does not always bring happiness. It was so with Bradbury Fisher, the hero of the story which I am about to relate. One of America’s most prominent tainted millionaires, he had two sorrows in life—his handicap refused to stir from twenty-four and his wife disapproved of his collection of famous golf relics. Once, finding him crooning over the trousers in which Ouimet had won his historic replay against Vardon and Ray in the American Open, she had asked him why he did not collect something worth while, like Old Masters or first editions.