“Then why must I bear it?”
“To make the point stick in your memory. Once, quite early in the morning, I came around the corner of a barn on a Philadelphia golf course, and there was a nice-looking elderly lady whom I had seen the day before taking her two small grandchildren out walking, addressing a ball with a brassie and saying, ‘Eye on the ball; slow back; carry through. Eye on the ball; slow back; carry through,’ over and over again. Brassie shots were her weakness. The next day that persevering old grandma went out and made low score in the National Women’s Championship. Now, if you’ll just think of yourself as Little Eyolf until you’re good and mad, it’ll help do the trick.”
“What were you doing in Philadelphia?” inquired the girl irrelevantly.
“Not golfing,” he returned. “So, if you don’t mind, we’ll postpone that. This is a golf lesson, and right here the serious business of the day begins. The first consideration is to cure you of star-gazing. You appreciate that that’s your main trouble?”
“Raising my head, you mean?”
“That’s it. Star-gazing, we call it.”
“It occurs because I forget myself.”
“And mostly on your irons. You get your wooden shots off clean. Now, let’s drive.”
Two straight shots flew down the course, his the longer by fifteen yards. A ninety-yard approach lay before her.
“Beginneth here the first lesson,” said Jeremy. “It’s a sure cure, on the homoeopathic principle. Invented it myself for a fellow on our college team who was a stargazer, and he showed his gratitude by eliminating me from the individual championship, that fall.” He took a cardboard box from his pocket, and extracted from it one of a number of small, gilt stars such as stationers carry in stock. This he pressed down upon the grass so close behind his pupil’s ball as almost to touch its lower arc. “Behold the star of your hopes.”