"Bet you anything you like," said he, "that Sam Totten sliced his tee
shot into the apricot orchard. He's played about four by now--and
they're cutthroating it on the drink hole, same as they always do....
About time for Jumbo to be putting in an appearance."
While he was speaking a tremendous form loomed large on the sky line,
dwarfing Miller and Totten. Once on level ground this giant struck a
rolling gait and rapidly overhauled his companions--overhauled them in
spite of two hundred and sixty pounds and an immense paunch which
swayed from side to side as he walked.
"Little Jumbo," said Waddles, sinking back in his chair. "Little Jumbo,
with his bag of clubs tucked under his left arm--one driver and all of
three irons. He carries that awful load because his doctor tells him he
ought to reduce. And he eats four pieces of apple pie à la mode with his
lunch. But a fine old fellow at that.... Well, I notice it's still a
threesome."
"Notice again," said the Bish, pointing to the left of the sycamores.
Waddles looked, and rose from his chair with a grunt of amazement. A
fourth figure came dragging itself up the slope of the hill--the
particular portion of the slope of the hill where the deepest trouble is
visited upon a sliced second shot. Judging by his appearance and manner
this fourth golfer had been neck-deep in grief, to say nothing of cactus
and manzanita. His head was hanging low on his breast, his shoulders
were sagging, his feet were shuffling along the ground, and he trailed a
golf club behind him. When a man trails a club to the eighteenth putting
green it is a sure sign that all is over but the shouting; and the wise
observer will do his shouting in a whisper. Waddles sat down suddenly.
"Well, as I live and breathe and run the Yavapai Golf and Country Club!"
he ejaculated, "there's my old friend, Mr. Peacock, with all his tail
feathers pulled out! The deserter has joined the colours again, and the
Old Guard is recruited to full war strength once more! They've actually
taken him back, after the way he's acted, too! Now what do you think of
that, eh?"
"If you ask me," said the Bish in his booming chest notes, "I'd say it
was just a case of _similia similibus curantur_."
"Nothing of the sort!" said Waddles, bristling instantly; "and besides,
I don't know what you mean. Bish, when you cut loose that belly barytone
of yours you always remind me of an empty barrel rolling down the cellar
stairs--a lot of noise, but you never spill anything worth mopping up.
Come again with that foreign stuff."
"_Similia similibus curantur_," repeated the Bish. "That's Latin."
Waddles shook his head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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