“Well, of all the almighty flukes,” said Frank. “Probably on the green.” David bubbled with laughter. “Oh, I say, what sport!” he said. “Now I know how to play golf. If you lie rather badly, take an iron and make it worse. Then take a niblick and hit it home.” They went back to the course to walk up Frank’s ball. It was lying impeccably twenty yards short of the shored-up bunker that guarded the green. And for once he was not monotonous; he chipped at it with a lot of back-spin, and it bounced against the boards of the bunker and fell at their feet. Thereafter he played racquets against the boards. Then he gave it up, and David, the reckless and unreasonable, was lying just a foot beyond the bunkers. In such wise the hot, heavenly afternoon went by. Dreadful and delightful things happened. Frank, after long consideration as to whether he could get over the brook with a drive at the tenth hole, decided to play short with a cleek, and pitched full into it. David, with two strokes in hand, putted four times at the eleventh before he got down, and, both of them trying to carry the far bunker at the thirteenth, topped into the near one instead. But there were delightful incidents to balance these distressing ones: Frank holed a mashie shot at the sixteenth, and at the next David ran through two (not one) bunkers off a topped drive, and a third with his second shot. But, deep down below, the basis of their enjoyment was their friendship, and neither thought how easily that priceless possession might have foundered and been lost in quagmires. . . . Frank won: a wholly loathsome putt on the last green, which went into the hole not by the honest front-door, nor even with a kick at the honest back door, but with a stealthy, sideway entrance, after circling round the hole, decided the match. “Oh, good putt,” said David politely, and instantly the politeness broke down. “Gosh, what a fluke!” he added. “Rot! I tried to hole it, and did,” said Frank. “Well, I said ‘good putt’ once,” said David. “And I can’t say it again. Simply can’t.”