O. S.
A HAZARD ON THE HOME GREEN.
Standing on our front door-step you can see our garden running down at a moderate speed to our front gate. Or, conversely, standing at the front gate, you can see it mounting in a leisurely fashion to the front door. In either case it consists of two narrow strips of lawn bisected by a well-kept perambulator drive. Beyond the grass on either side blooms a profusion of bless-my-soul-if-I-haven't-forgotten-agains and other quaintly named old-world English flowers. On the left-hand strip of lawn, looking gatewards, is the metal pin to which the captive golf-ball is tied. On the right is the pear-tree, to which later on we have to affix a captive pear.
"What I like about the garden," I said to Araminta when we first moved in, "is the fact that it is in front, so that visitors, instead of saying in a perfunctory way, 'Have you got a garden, too? How delightful!' will be forced to murmur, 'How sweet the clover smelt on your lawn as we came up the drive. What a perfectly entrancing golf-ball.' If I must go to the trouble and expense of keeping up a private pleasaunce I want everybody to see the pleasantry of it at once."
"Swank," replied Araminta. She is absurdly early-Georgian in the matter of repartee.
Last Saturday I determined to mow the lawn. I put on my oldest suit of clothes with the now fashionable slit-trouser leg, fastened the green bonnet to the front of the car, and wheeled it out of the tool garage. Araminta went out, saying airily that she would be back to tea. After a little trouble I induced the instrument to graze the left-hand pasture as far as the hobbled Colonel. Then, feeling that my shoulders wanted opening a bit, I went indoors and fetched a brassie-spoon. I suppose I must have been striking with unusual vehemence, but anyway, in playing a good second to the fourteenth green, I sent the pin flying out of the ground. The Colonel broke his parole and dashed rapidly to the topmost boughs of the pear-tree on the right, carrying the rest of the apparatus with him. There was nothing to do but to follow him, spoon in hand.
It was soon evident that the pear-tree had been over-looked during spring-cleaning, for the foliage, though very luxuriant, was in an extremely soiled condition.
I had just located the deserter when I heard feminine voices of unknown proprietorship. It is the habit of quick masterful decisions in important crises that has given to Englishmen an empire on which the sun never holes out, and I decided instantly to remain where I was. If it had been a mashie I might have faced them, but a brassie-spoon out of a lie like that—no.
The callers came slowly up the path, rang the bell, chattered to the servant, left cards, and retired. Without much trouble I could have brained them with the brassie-spoon as they passed beneath me. But some odd impulse of chivalry restrained me. It is blunders like these that have wrecked the plans of the greatest generals. Just as they opened the gate who should appear but—of course—Araminta? "Oh, I'm so glad I've caught you!" she cried. "You must stay and have tea now. We'll have it in the garden. My husband's somewhere about. He said he was going to mow the lawn, but I suppose he was too lazy." Lazy, indeed! Ha, ha! So like a woman.