"You're a perfect dear!" said Beth. "I'll do better--see if I don't." Mary then prepared to putt, Russell's approach having left her twelve feet short of the hole. "And be sure to get it there," cautioned her partner. "It's uphill, you know. Allow for it." Mary bit her lip and hit the grass an inch behind the ball. It rolled something less than four feet. "Hit the ball! Hit the ball!" snapped Russell angrily. "What's the matter with you to-day?" Mary apologised profusely--probably to keep Russell quiet; and she laughed too--a dry, hard little laugh that didn't have any fun in it. Bill glared at Davidson for an instant, and his mouth opened, but he swallowed whatever impulse was troubling him, and carefully laid his ball on the lip of the cup for a two-inch putt that not even Beth could have missed. Russell then holed his long one, which seemed to put him in a better humour, and the men started for the second tee. In mixed foursomes the drive alternates. Mary and Beth took the short cut used by the caddies, and I followed them at a discreet distance. Mary babbled incessantly about everything in the world but golf, which was her way of conveying the impression that nothing unusual had happened; and Beth, womanlike, helped her out by pretending to be deeply interested in what Mary was saying. And yet they tell you that if women could learn to bluff they would make good poker players! As I waited for the men to drive I thought of the Mary Brooke I used to know--the leggy little girl with her hair in pigtails--and I remembered that in those days she would stand just so much teasing from the boys, and then somebody would be slapped--hard. Had she changed so much, I wondered? On the third hole Russell began nagging again, and Bill's face was a study. For two cents I think he would have choked him. Mary tried to carry it off with a smile, but it was a weak effort. Nothing but absolute obedience and recognition of his right to give orders would satisfy Russell. "It's no use your telling me now that you're sorry," he scolded after Mary had butchered a spoon shot on Number Three. "You won't take advice when it's offered. I told you not to try that confounded spoon. A spoon is no club for a beginner." Mary gasped. "But--I'm not a beginner! I've been playing ever and ever so long! And I like that spoon." "I don't care what you like. If we win this thing you must do as I say." "Oh! So that's it--because you want to win?" "What do you think I entered for--exercise? Nothing to beat but a lot of dubs--and you're not even trying!" "Bill is no dub." Mary flared up a bit in defence of her old friend. "Ho!" sneered Russell. "So you call him Bill, do you?"