The nurse brought the paper and I signified Thank you.
"I'll leave you for a while now," she said; "The fire's all right. Your drink's by the bed. You'll ring if you want anything."
All these things I knew. My drink is always beside the bed; the bell is the natural communication between me and the house. What a foolish chatterbox the woman was! I nodded and she went out.
On her return an hour or so later she asked, "Is there anything in the paper?"
Before answering I examined this question. What did it mean? It did not mean, Are the pages this morning absolutely blank, for a change? It meant, Is there a good murder? Is any very important person dead? In reply I handed the paper to her.
Instead of reading it she began a long account of her morning's walk. She told me where she had been; whom she had seen; whom she had thought she had seen and then found that it was some one else; what somebody had said. Not a syllable mattered, I now realised; but yesterday I should have joined in the talk, asked questions, encouraged her in her foolishness.
Just before lunch my brother and a guest came into the room and began to talk about golf. My brother said that he had been round in 98. This was his best since September, when he went round in 97. He described his difficulties at the tenth hole.
It all seemed very idiotic to me, for the game was over and done with. Why rake it up?
The guest said that he had lost two balls, one of which was expensive. His driving had been good, but in the short game he had been weak. He could never quite make up his mind whether he putted best with a gun-metal putter or a wooden one.
My brother asked me if I remembered that long drive of his two years ago?