Boys -- Fiction; Cricket -- Fiction; Golf stories; Love stories; Schools -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
To look at her now you would never guess that she was once a shrinking
_débutante_, a hewer of turf, and a drawer of water from the eyes of the
green-keeper. Her putting is still erratic, and she is rather helpless
in heavy sand; but, given a clean lie and a fair stance, she will handle
her light clubs to some purpose, and her swing is a "sicht for sair
een." If you are at all off your game she will beat you; therefore it is
advisable to offer her points before beginning the match, not so much
because she needs them as to preserve your masculine self-respect in the
event of a "regrettable incident."
Miss Elsie Innes combined all the virtues of the girl-golfer in her own
graceful young body. Though she had "filled out" considerably since we
last saw her, she was anything but a hobnailed, masculine woman. She was
neither heavily built nor muscular; she looked almost too fragile to
play at all. But she handled her light clubs with a suppleness and
dexterity usually given only to a schoolboy of fourteen, and the length
of her drive was amazing. She was always graceful, always cool, and, as
Pip once noted to himself, "never got either hot or hairy."
After their first meeting at Raven's cottage Pip and Elsie saw each
other constantly. They played a round of golf every day, usually between
tea and dinner, the hour when the ardent male golfer relaxes from his
noonday strenuousness and turns to thoughts of mixed foursomes. Usually
Pip and Elsie played Mr. and Mrs. Raven. Raven was a far better golfer
than Pip, but then Elsie was very much the superior of Mrs. Raven, which
made matters even. Many were the battles that raged between the two
couples. At first victory favoured the married pair. Raven, besides
being a scratch golfer, was a good general, and his unruffled coolness
and unerring advice made the most of his wife's limited powers. Pip and
Elsie, on the other hand, did not "combine" well. Elsie, who (strictly
between ourselves) fancied her golf not a little, insisted on dictating
the line of action to be followed on each occasion, and more than once
told Pip what club to use. Pip, though relatively her inferior, declined
at first to be trampled upon by a female, even a high-spirited goddess
with fair hair and a swing like an archangel. But few men in Pip's
condition argue the point long: after a brief struggle to assert the
predominance of man he subsided completely, and, as he thought, rather
diplomatically. There he was wrong. The sage of antiquity who composed
the uncomplimentary proverb about "a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree"
knew something of life, and the course of Pip's true love might have run
a good deal smoother if he had put down his masculine foot a little more
frequently. However, there is no doubt that after his capitulation their
golfing efforts reached a higher level than before. After a series of
matches extending over a week, each side stood with three games to its
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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