"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon."
It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name.
"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she said.
There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the stroke.
"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so."
Honora would try again.
"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it off a little still. Let it swing all the way round."
"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!"
"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!"
"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale, emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows. They sat down on one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass. Mr. Spence produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully.