Part 40 (1/2)

”Why did you ask me to play with _you_, then?”

”I didn't think you ought to play with him,” said Pip coolly. ”He's an utter outsider.”

”I shall play with whom I like,” said Elsie hotly.

”All right,” said Pip; ”I'll tell him. What time do you want him to be down at the tee?”

Elsie, though not inexperienced in the management of young men, fairly gasped for breath. This slow-speaking, serious youth would, unless she could speedily extricate herself, either compel her to acknowledge herself defeated or else force her into an unpremeditated golf-match with a comparative stranger.

”I--I tell you I don't want to play with Mr. Gaythorne,” she said.

”Oh, sorry!” replied Pip; ”I thought you said you did. Very well, I'll tell him not to come, and you can play me instead.”

Now, it is obviously unwise to continue to a.s.sert to a second party that you have a previous engagement with a third party when you have not, especially when your knowledge is shared by the second party. So Elsie did the only possible thing, and laughed.

”All right, Pip,” she said; ”I'll play you. Be down at the tee early and we'll get off before the rush begins. As it is, I shall be driven into all the time, playing with a duffer!”

Pip, quite unmoved, parried this insult with another.

”Right-o,” he said. ”What shall I give you--a half?”

Elsie smiled indulgently.

”As a favour,” she replied, ”and to preserve your masculine pride, I will play you level. Otherwise----”

Pip interrupted. He was not looking quite so serene as usual, and he puffed almost nervously at his pipe.

”What shall we play for?” he asked.

”What do you mean?”

”In a match,” he explained, ”it is usual to play for some small stake--a ball, or a bottle of----”

”Nonsense!” said Elsie decidedly.

”Not a bit; it's often done,” said Pip. ”What shall we play for?”

”We shall play for love.”

”Love? Right!”

There was an awkward pause. Technical terms lead one into such pitfalls.

Elsie felt herself beginning to turn pink. Pip, who might have smoothed the situation over, made it worse by saying,--

”So it's to be a love-match?”

There was no mistaking Elsie's colour now. A blush ran flaming over her face in a great scarlet wave. But Pip proceeded quite calmly,--

”That's just what I want it to be. I'm glad you said that, though of course you didn't mean it in that way. You are a good golfer. On your day you can get round in, say, ninety. I am a rotter. I have only twice got round under a hundred. If I play you level to-morrow and beat you, will you--marry me?”