She hung her head and blushed. A sudden suspicion struck me.
"Mabel," I said sternly, "are you—can you be—betting on this game?"
"Yes, Sir," she answered with a touch of defiance. "Boys always does."
I told Haynes, who appeared profoundly shocked.
"Good G——! I mean, Mon dieu!" he exclaimed. "What are we doing?"
"Surely you can't hold us responsible? The child's parents ..."
"I don't mean that, you ass. Here we have the innocent public putting its money on our play, and we're treating the whole thing as a joke. This has got to be a match, after all. A woman's fortune hangs upon the issue—doesn't it, Lucy?"
"Yes, Sir," she answered without comprehension.
From this point the game became a grim struggle. I won the third hole in seventeen, but Haynes took the fourth in nineteen to my twenty-two.
At the fifth I noticed a pond guarding the green. I carefully circumvented this with my faithful putter and holed out in my smallest score of the round so far.