John Henry Smith | Page 5

is startlingly original," I said, and her bright and innocent smile showed her appreciation of the compliment. "How many have you in your collection?"
[Illustration: "Fore there! hay there!!"]
"Oh, lots and lots of them," she said. "I am to have a portrait of myself done in oil, showing me in a golfing costume just about to knock the ball as far as I can, and the frame will be composed of golf balls I have found. Oh, here's another lost ball!" and she started for one which was lying on the fair green not many yards away. I knew to whom it belonged.
"Fore! Fore! Hi, hay there; drop it; that's my ball!" yelled a club member named Pepper, coming on a run from behind a bunker. Pepper is a married man, near the fifty-year mark, and he is extremely nervous and even irritable when any one approaches his ball.
"Don't touch it!" shouted Pepper, now on a dead run. "You'll make me lose the hole! Don't you know the make of the ball you're playing? Mine is a Kempshall remade."
"Oh, this is not my ball," frankly declared Miss Dangerfield. "My ball is over there, but I thought this was one which had been lost."
"I pitched it out of that trap a moment ago," insisted Pepper, "and did not take my eyes off it."
"I am sure I do not want it if it is yours!" haughtily declared Miss Dangerfield, turning indignantly away.
"Thank you," said Pepper, politely as he knows how, and we went on our way leaving him to recover his composure as best he could. I looked back and noted that he fumbled his next shot.
"If I thought as much as that of a mere golf ball I would never play the game," pouted Miss Dangerfield. "I think he is horrid, and I shall never speak to him again!"
"If he had lost the ball he would have lost the hole," I explained, anxious to extenuate Pepper's offense as much as possible.
"Suppose he did lose the old hole!" exclaimed the wronged young lady. "What does it amount to if you lose one insignificant hole when there are eighteen in all?"
I could think of nothing else to say, and had the tact to change the conversation to the unique frame for her portrait with its "lost ball" border.
"You will save material and secure a more artistic effect," I suggested, "by having an artisan cut the balls in halves. They will then lie flat to the frame, and one ball will do the service of two."
Miss Dangerfield was so taken with this idea that she speedily forgot that brute Pepper.
Coming in we were passed by Marshall, Chilvers, Carter, and Boyd. How I envied them! We stood and silently watched while each made ripping long drives. There is nothing which contributes more to a man's good opinion of himself than to line a ball straight out two hundred yards when a bevy of pretty girls is watching him.
The tendency of the woman golfer to frankly express her admiration for the strength and skill of a man who can drive a clean and long ball is her great redeeming trait when on the links.
The man who is careless of the praise of his male peers is prone to be raised to the seventh heaven of golf bliss when listening to the long-drawn chorus of "Oh!" "Wasn't that splendid!" "I could just die if I could drive like that!" and similar expressions from dainty maidens who do not know the difference between a follow through and a jigger.
An ideal golf course would be one where the members of the fair sex are content to group themselves about the driving tees and award an honest meed of praise and applause to their fathers, husbands, or sweethearts.
"You're up, Thomas," I said when the crack foursome was out of range.
Thomas basted out a screecher, and Miss Ross followed with the best shot she ever made. Miss Dangerfield missed as usual.
"I'm awfully sorry," she said, "but I'm sure you will do better than Mr. Thomas."
In my anxiety to verify her prediction I pressed, topped my ball, and it rolled into the bunker. Chilvers looked back and grinned and then said something to Marshall at which both of them laughed.
Of course we were beaten, and beaten disgracefully. Miss Dangerfield did not take it the least to heart, but the dinner did not cost her thirty-two dollars. Not that I care for the money, but it is the first time this year that my score has been more than ninety.
I can take Thomas out alone and beat him so badly he will not dare turn in his score, but in a mixed foursome he can put it all over me.
It does not take much to throw a man off his golf game. For instance: