The Clicking of Cuthbert

His opponent won the hole.

We moved to the second tee.

"Now, that young man," said Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, indicating her late

husband's blushing antagonist, "is quite right to wear knickerbockers.

He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown you

that you----"

"I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,

solicitously. "You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in your

eyes."

"Muzzer's pet got little buttons of eyes, that don't never have no wild

gleam in zem because he's muzzer's own darling, he was!" said Mrs.

Luella Mainprice Jopp.

A hollow groan escaped Vincent Jopp's ashen lips.

I need not recount the play hole by hole, I think. There are some

subjects that are too painful. It was pitiful to watch Vincent Jopp in

his downfall. By the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced to

one, and his antagonist, rendered a new man by success, was playing

magnificent golf. On the next hole he drew level. Then with a

superhuman effort Jopp contrived to halve the eleventh, twelfth, and

thirteenth. It seemed as though his iron will might still assert

itself, but on the fourteenth the end came.

He had driven a superb ball, outdistancing his opponent by a full fifty

yards. The latter played a good second to within a few feet of the

green. And then, as Vincent Jopp was shaping for his stroke, Luella

Mainprice gave tongue.

"Vincent!"

"Well?"

"Vincent, that other man--bad man--not playing fair. When your back was

turned just now, he gave his ball a great bang. I was watching

him."

"At any rate," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I do hope, when the game

is over, Vincent, that you will remember to cool slowly."

"Flesho!" cried Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp triumphantly. "I've been trying to

remember the name all the afternoon. I saw about it in one of the

papers. The advertisements speak most highly of it. You take it before

breakfast and again before retiring, and they guarantee it to produce

firm, healthy flesh on the most sparsely-covered limbs in next to no

time. Now, will you remember to get a bottle tonight? It comes

in two sizes, the five-shilling (or large size) and the smaller at

half-a-crown. G. K. Chesterton writes that he used it regularly for

years."

Vincent Jopp uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took the

mashie from his bag, was trembling like an aspen.

Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the club-house, a beaten

man.

       *       *       *       *       *

And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that in golf there is no

such thing as a soft snap. You can never be certain of the finest

player. Anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the

game. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over a

hole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horses

or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the

Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier.

But to bet at golf is pure gambling.

9

 The Rough Stuff

Into the basking warmth of the day there had crept, with the approach

of evening, that heartening crispness which heralds the advent of

autumn. Already, in the valley by the ninth tee, some of the trees had

begun to try on strange colours, in tentative experiment against the

coming of nature's annual fancy dress ball, when the soberest tree

casts off its workaday suit of green and plunges into a riot of reds

and yellows. On the terrace in front of the club-house an occasional

withered leaf fluttered down on the table where the Oldest Member sat,

sipping a thoughtful seltzer and lemon and listening with courteous

gravity to a young man in a sweater and golf breeches who occupied the

neighbouring chair.

"She is a dear girl," said the young man a little moodily, "a dear girl

in every respect. But somehow--I don't know--when I see her playing

golf I can't help thinking that woman's place is in the home."

The Oldest Member inclined his frosted head.

"You think," he said, "that lovely woman loses in queenly dignity when

she fails to slam the ball squarely on the meat?"

"I don't mind her missing the pill," said the young man. "But I think

her attitude toward the game is too light-hearted."

"Perhaps it cloaks a deeper feeling. One of the noblest women I ever

knew used to laugh merrily when she foozled a short putt. It was only

later, when I learned that in the privacy of her home she would weep

bitterly and bite holes in the sofa cushions, that I realized that she

did but wear the mask. Continue to encourage your fiancee to

play the game, my boy. Much happiness will reward you. I could tell you

a story----"

A young woman of singular beauty and rather statuesque appearance came

out of the club-house carrying a baby swaddled in flannel. As she drew

near the table she said to the baby:

"Chicketty wicketty wicketty wipsey pop!"

In other respects her intelligence appeared to be above the ordinary.

"Isn't he a darling!" she said, addressing the Oldest Member.

The Sage cast a meditative eye upon the infant. Except to the eye of