Thereafter came distress and difficulties. A bunker welcomed Jeannie’s second, and the bunker retained her third. A sky-sweeping iron shot was recorded as her fourth, and the fifth leaped across the green as if a wasp had stung it. Jack, meantime, had laid his second nearly dead, and four was sufficient. “That sha’n’t count,” said Jeannie; “we’ll begin now. The handicap is as follows: We both play on till we reach the green, do you see, and then the scoring begins. We are like as we lie on the green, Jack, and after that you give me a stroke a hole. And I’ll play you for half a crown,” she added, with a burst of reckless speculation. It was an afternoon of spring, a day of that exquisite temper seldom felt except in our much-maligned climate. April had laid aside its outbreaks of petulant rain, and wore the face of a laughing child. The great grave downs over which they played were scoured by a westerly wind, which swelled the buds and smoothed out the creases in the little buttons of green which were bursting from the hawthorn. From the height an admirable expanse of big, wholesome country was visible on every side: to the west the houses of Wroxton stood red and glimmering in a hollow in the hills, and climbed the slopes of the circle. In the middle rose the gray Cathedral piercing the blue veil of pure air in which the lower houses were enveloped, and the tower was gilded with the sunshine. North and east lay a delectable land, where broad fields alternated with woods, round which hovered, like a green mist, the first outbreak of bursting leaves, and down the centre of the valley, unseen but traceable from a livelier flush of green, ran the river. To the south there were only downs, rising and falling in strong undulations like the muscles of strong arms interlaced. Overhead skylarks carolled unseen in the blue, or dropped, when their song was done, among the grass, breathless and drunken with music; the earth had renewed its lease of life, and the everlasting fountains of youth were unsealed again. Never since the seasons had begun their courses was winter farther away, and never since Adam had walked with Eve in the garden had love touched two lives more closely than it touched Jeannie and Jack as they went over the breezy downs, club in hand. The details of the play would not be interesting even to golfers, to others tedious; but it may be remarked that Jack drove long balls, which started low and rose inexplicably toward the end of their flight, and that a clean ball rising suddenly against a blue sky is invariably felt to be a stimulating object. “It must be so nice,” remarked Jeannie, “if it doesn’t hurt to be a golf ball. You lie there seeing nothing except blades of grass close round you, and then suddenly the ground races away from you, and you rise, rise, like that one did, over a bank and a road, and drop on the smooth short grass of the green.”