[Illustration: "We rested on top of the hill"]
Against her protest I teed another ball, but she went under it and it met the fate of its predecessors. It took all my eloquence to induce her to make the five attempts which followed, and then I made the discovery that I had brought only eight new balls with me. So I excused myself and went back to the club house and bought a box of a dozen, but nothing would change her determination not to try it again.
I am firmly convinced that with a little luck she could have done it, but it was the first time Miss Harding had played this course, and that makes lots of difference.
Of the various incidents in this most delightful game nothing gave me more keen enjoyment than when Miss Harding played Carter's ball. It was by mistake, of course. Nature has implanted in woman an instinct which leads her to play any ball rather than her own. The ball thus selected is generally without a blemish, and it has been ordained that a weak little creature can with one stroke cut that sphere in halves.
That is what happened to Carter's ball when Miss Harding played it by mistake, and I never laughed more heartily. Carter smiled and bowed and pretended to be amused, but I knew he was not.
We rested on top of the hill after this exploit and talked of the rare view and of other topics which had nothing whatever to do with golf. Never before have I rested during a game, and I did not think it possible. I have been on that hill innumerable times, but it never occurred to me to take more than a passing glance at the inspiring vista which spreads away to the north and west.
We talked of poetry and of art. Think of sitting with a golf club in your hand, resting a few rods from a tee where a clean shot will carry the railway tracks a hundred feet below and land your ball on a green two hundred and eighty yards from the tee--it is one of the finest holes in the country--think of idling an hour away on the most perfect golf afternoon you ever saw, and repeating line after line of verse descriptive of "meadows green and sylvan shades," and all that sort of thing!
We did that! I would not believe it, but I actually felt sorry for the chaps who went past us, their minds absorbed in the mere struggle to see which would take the fewer numbers of strokes in putting golf balls in certain round holes. Honestly I pitied them.