"I don't know," I replied. "That's about my usual at the old game." And therewith I made my tee, drove and went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf.
After hoeing the vegetables with a mashie for a hot two hours, I fought my way out of the rhubarb on all fours, with a golf-ball between my teeth, and then strode doggedly back to the tee and drove into the virgin artichoke forest. While I toyed there with the sub-soil, the unwearied James went to earth among the marrows. Hastily I heeled my ball into the ground (to be retrieved by James months later and announced as a curious scientific result of growing artichokes on a golf course), uttered a cry of triumph, and strolled out into the open.
"A hundred and seventy-nine. My game, I think," I announced.
James extricated himself and walked with me to the butt.
"Hullo!" I said, "it's sunk. Thought it was a floater. It ought to be for a half-crown ball."
"You mustn't lose it," said James suspiciously. "Well let off the water and get it out."
"No, no," I protested. "It's not one that I really valued. Oh, very well," I added indifferently, feeling in my pocket for a non-floater.
James stooped to open the tap, and I popped the new ball in unobtrusively.
It floated. And the next instant James stood up and saw it.