Part 42 (2/2)

Instinctively Pip and Elsie turned and looked at each other in dismay.

Then Pip said--

”Let's tramp out to the turn, and we'll play the last nine holes first.

It will come to the same thing in the end.”

Elsie agreed, and they set off together across the links in the direction of the ninth hole. They had no caddies, for each felt that on this occasion witnesses were impossible.

Pip, indeed, offered to carry Elsie's clubs as well as his own, but he was met with a very curt refusal.

”Nonsense! You would always be hammering your own ball a hundred yards away in a bunker, while I was waiting for my mas.h.i.+e.”

The rain had ceased, and a watery sun shone down upon them. There was no wind, and the conditions for golf were almost perfect. The greens had become a trifle fiery during the recent drought, and the morning's rain had stiffened them finely.

Presently they found themselves on the tenth tee.

”You drive first,” said Pip.

Elsie began to tee her ball.

”It's the last time you'll have the chance,” he continued.

Elsie picked up her ball.

”For that,” she remarked, ”you shall drive first. I am not going to take any favours from a duffer.”

Pip rose from the tee-box on which he was sitting and took her ball from her hand. Then he stooped down and teed it carefully.

”Ladies first,” he remarked briefly.

Elsie, feeling curiously weak, said no more, but obeyed him. She made a pretty drive, the ball keeping low, but towering suddenly before it dropped. It lay, clean and white, in a good lie a hundred and fifty yards away.

”Good beat!” said Pip appreciatively, and began to address his own ball.

His rigid stance and curious lifting swing were the exact opposite of Elsie's supple movements, but for all that he outdrove her by nearly a hundred yards. It was a Cyclopean effort, and the Haskell ball, as it bounded over the hard ground, which had been little affected by the rain, looked as if it would never stop.

”Lovely drive!” cried Elsie involuntarily.

”Yes, it was a hefty swipe,” admitted Pip. ”I get about two of those each round. The rest average five yards.”

The hole was a simple one. A good drive usually left the ball in a nice lie, whence the green, which was guarded by a bunker, could be reached with an iron. Pip's ball was lying well up, and only a chip with his mas.h.i.+e was required to lay him dead. Elsie found herself faced by that difficulty which confronts all females who essay masculine golf-courses.

Her ball, though well and truly struck, was farther from the hole than her iron could carry it. A bra.s.sie-shot would get her over the bunker, but would probably overrun the green, which lay immediately beyond; while anything in the shape of a run-up ball would be trapped. She decided to risk an iron shot. She did her best, but the distance was too great for her. The ball dropped into the bunker with a soft thud; she required two more to get out; and Pip, who had succeeded in clearing the bunker with his second and running down a long putt, won the hole in an unnecessarily perfect three.

”One down,” said Elsie. ”Too good a start, Pip. You'll lose now.”

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