"How shall we play?" I asked. "You have improved so much and are so confident that I dare not offer you more than a stroke a hole."
"I shall beat you at those odds," she said. "This is a short course, you know."
"You will have to make it in a hundred to beat me," I replied.
"Fore!" she called, and drove a beautiful ball with a true swing which was the perfection of grace. I made one which did not beat it enough to give me any advantage, and we started down the field together.
"Mr. Wallace must be a wonderfully clever teacher," I said, "or else he has a most remarkably apt pupil. I wish I could improve that rapidly."
Miss Harding smiled but declined to commit herself. Her second shot was a three-quarter midiron to the green and she made it like a veteran. She played the stroke--and it is one of the most difficult--in perfect form, and I was so astounded that I cut under a short approach shot and had to play the odd. She came within inches of going down in three, and I then missed a long putt and lost the hole outright, she not needing the stroke handicap.
She drove another perfect ball on the next hole, but the green was three hundred and fifty yards away and I reached it in two against her three. My work on the green was abominable and we both were down in fives.
"Two up, Jacques Henri!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Really, now, don't you think I've improved?"
"Improved!" I gasped. "That's not the word for it! You have been translated into a golf magician! I cannot understand it!"
I don't suppose I played my best game, but even if I had I could not have won at the odds stipulated. I never lose interest in a golf game, but I must confess that I paid far more attention to her play than to my own.
It was not the first time that I had witnessed a fine exhibition of golf by a woman, but it was the first time I had been privileged to see a strikingly pretty girl execute shots as they should be made. All former experiences had led me to the belief that feminine beauty and proficiency in golf run in adverse ratio. But here was a superb creature who combined beauty with a skill which was surpassing.
It was difficult to believe the testimony of my own eyes. Here was a girl who had taken fifteen to make the first hole of Woodvale only a few weeks preceding; who had driven eight of my new balls into a pond which demanded only an eighty-yard carry; who had told me that the one ambition of her golfing life was to drive a ball far enough so that she might have difficulty in finding it; who had repeatedly missed strokes entirely, had mutilated the turf, sliced, pulled and committed all the faults and crimes possible to a novice--here was this same young lady playing a game which was well-nigh perfect to the extent of her strength!