"She didn't get the chance. Old man, have you ever sent one right up the edge of that bunker in front of the seventh and just not gone in?"     

       "Very rarely."     

       "I did once. It was my second shot, from a good lie, with the light iron, and I followed well through and thought I had gone just too far, and, when I walked up, there was my ball on the edge of the bunker, nicely teed up on a chunk of grass, so that I was able to lay it dead with my mashie-niblick, holing out in six. Well, what I mean to say is, I feel now as I felt then—as if some unseen power had withheld me in time from some frightful disaster."     

       "I know just how you feel," said Peter, gravely.     

       "Peter, old man, that girl said golf bored her pallid. She said she thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You don't seem revolted," said James.     

       "I am revolted, but not surprised. You see, she said the same thing to me only a few minutes before."     

       "She did!"     

       "It amounted to the same thing. I had just been telling her how I did the lake-hole today in two, and she said that in her opinion golf was a game for children with water on the brain who weren't athletic enough to play Animal Grab."     

       The two men shivered in sympathy.     

       "There must be insanity in the family," said James at last.     

       "That," said Peter, "is the charitable explanation."     

       "We were fortunate to find it out in time."     

       "We were!"     

       "We mustn't run a risk like that again."     

       "Never again!"     

       "I think we had better take up golf really seriously. It will keep us out of mischief."     

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