“Try!”
“I have tried.”
He gnawed his putter again.
“She was asking me just now if I couldn’t manage to come to Marvis Bay, too,” he said.
“That surely is encouraging? It suggests that she is not entirely indifferent to your society.”
“Yes, but what’s the use? Do you know,” a gleam coming into his eyes for a moment, “I have a feeling that if I could ever beat some really fairly good player—just once—I could bring the thing off.” The gleam faded. “But what chance is there of that?”
It was a question which I did not care to answer. I merely patted his shoulder sympathetically, and after a little while he left me and walked away. I was still sitting there, thinking over his hard case, when Barbara Medway came out of the club-house.
She, too, seemed grave and pre-occupied, as if there was something on her mind. She took the chair which Ferdinand had vacated, and sighed wearily.
“Have you ever felt,” she asked, “that you would like to bang a man on the head with something hard and heavy? With knobs on?”
I said I had sometimes experienced such a desire, and asked if she had any particular man in mind. She seemed to hesitate for a moment before replying, then, apparently, made up her mind to confide in me. My advanced years carry with them certain pleasant compensations, one of which is that nice girls often confide in me. I frequently find myself enrolled as a father-confessor on the most intimate matters by beautiful creatures from whom many a younger man would give his eye-teeth to get a friendly word. Besides, I had known Barbara since she was a child. Frequently—though not recently—I had given her her evening bath. These things form a bond.