"It--it isn't gone," said Amanda nervously, and pointed to the ball still lying at her feet. "What an extraordinary thing!" cried Aunt Susannah; and she made another attempt, with a precisely similar result. "Give me another stick!" she demanded. "Here, let me choose for myself--this one doesn't suit me. I'll have that flat thing." "But that's a putter," Amanda explained agonisedly. "What's a putter? You said just now that they were all clubs," said Aunt Susannah, pausing. "They are all clubs," I explained patiently. "But each has a different name." "You don't mean to say you give them names like a little girl with her dolls?" cried Aunt Susannah. "Why, what a babyish game it is!" She laughed very heartily. "At any rate," she continued, with that determination which some of her friends call by another name, "I am sure that this will be easier to play with!" She grasped the putter, and in some miraculous way drove the ball to a considerable distance. "Oh, splendid!" cried Amanda. Her troubled brow cleared a little, and she followed suit, with mediocre success. Aunt Susannah pointed out that her ball had gone farther than either of ours, and grasped her putter tenaciously. "It's a better game than I expected from your description," she conceded. "Oh, I daresay I shall get to like it. I must come and practise every day." We glanced at each other in a silent horror of despair, and Aunt Susannah after a few quite decent strokes, triumphantly holed out. "What next?" said she. I hastily arranged her ball on the second tee: but the luck of golf is proverbially capricious. She swung her club, and hit nothing. She swung it again, and hit the ground. "_Why_ can't I do it?" she demanded, turning fiercely upon me. "You keep losing your feet," I explained deferentially. "Spare me your detestable slang terms, Laurence, at least!" she cried, turning on me again like a whirlwind. "If you think I have lost my temper--which is absurd!--you might have the courage to say so in plain English!" "Oh, no, Aunt Susannah!" I said. "You don't understand----" "Or want to," she snapped. "Of all silly games----" "I mean you misunderstood me," I pursued, trembling. "Your foot slipped, and that spoilt your stroke. You should have nails in your boots, as we have." "Oh!" said Aunt Susannah, only half pacified. But she succeeded in dislodging her ball at last, and driving it into a bunker. At the same moment, Amanda suddenly clutched me by the arm. "Oh, Laurence!" she said in a bloodcurdling whisper. "_What_ shall we do? Here is Colonel Bartlemy!" The worst had happened. The hottest-tempered man in the club, the oldest member, the best player, the greatest stickler for etiquette, was hard upon our track; and Aunt Susannah, with a red and determined countenance, was urging her ball up the bunker, and watching it roll back again. "Dear Auntie," said Amanda, in her sweetest voice, "you had much better take it out."