Some premonition of feminine detachment prompted me to keep my eyes rigidly on the tuft which concealed my ball, as I strode forward. But half-way I turned. I felt Amy was not with me. She was standing precisely where I had left her, her hat off, her pink tongue stuck out in the direction of the caddies' shed.
"Amy!" I shouted, and the sound of my voice had an indescribably incongruous and humiliating echo. "Amy, come here at once; how dare——"
Amy came ambling across the fairway, hat in hand, my bag of clubs left where she had deposited them upside down in the tee-box for greater freedom in responding with gestures of defiance to the chaff of the enemy.
"Now look here," I said as Amy stood wonderingly before me; "I am very, very disappointed in you—very, very angry. You wanted to earn your living, I understood?"
Amy's brows darkened but her lips were slightly tremulous.
"Mother won't let me go into the laundry," she said sulkily, "'cos father says I'm not sperienced enough, and Jimmy Baines give me 'is cheek, so I give it 'im back."
Thus we stood surveying the situation, my girl-caddie and I. There seemed at the moment only one sane way of ending it.
"Very well, Amy," I said dispassionately, "you had better run home and tell your mother—tell your mother to come up to the house after dinner, if there's anything she needs."
Amy resigned her position without a murmur; but before she went she extracted two paintless, weary-looking golf-balls from the pocket of her mauve skirt and offered me them for sixpence.