“The hole must be unpleasant,” said Jack. “You go trotting over the green, and then suddenly tumble into a horrible, small, dark prison, with iron at the bottom.” “Yes, and somebody says ‘Good shot!’ but they take you out again. Oh, Jack, may I take off my hat?” All mankind may be divided into those who like hats and those who do not. Some people habitually wear a hat unless there is a real reason, like a church or royalty, for taking it off, but to others a hat is to be always discarded if possible. Both Jeannie and the other were habitually hatless folk, a characteristic which goes hand-in-hand with a love for wind and large open places, and is borne out, to endless issues, in the normal attitude of the mind toward problems of life. She gave it to her caddie to carry for her, and shook her head to free it of its prison-house shades. “That is better,” she said. “Now my drives will go ten yards farther.” Colonel Raymond, meantime, playing behind them, was lavish of advice to his opponent. “Cultivate a style,” he said. “Hew out a style for yourself, and the rest will follow. Ah!”--and he watched his own ball, which he had topped heavily with his mashie, skip and bump over the outlying banks of a bunker and roll up gently to the hole. “A useful stroke that,” said this incomparable man. “I picked it up from poor young Tom Morris. Time and again have I seen him skim his ball over the rough stuff and lay it dead. A fine, useful shot.” Useful the shot undoubtedly was, and certainly there was no showiness about it, a quality which Colonel Raymond detested. “You’ve got to get into the hole,” was his maxim. “Well, get there,” and he missed his putt. Colonel Raymond, on his return to Wroxton after the recovery of Maria, had been at first a little disconcerted to find that the engagement of Cousin Jeannie was common property. Mrs. Raymond, no doubt, would have mentioned it in her letters to him, but the Colonel had begged her not to write at all. “The other children will be with me,” he had said, “and a letter may so easily carry infection. Why, there was a man in India who got the cholera simply through a letter. So don’t write, Constance. Send me a telegram every day or two to say how Maria is, and don’t fret yourself. Worry and fright, as Cousin Jeannie said, are to be avoided.” But almost before the first shock of the news had conveyed itself to the Colonel, he saw his ingenious way out of it. “Didn’t I say they were engaged all along?” he roared to his old cronies. “I remember nearly letting it out one evening here. It was intended, as I said, not to be known at once, and I kept my counsel. But I remember letting it slip once at Miss Clifford’s. Ask her if it is not so. I knew all along, all along. Is that your lead, partner? A devilish poor one.”