The paint was still fresh in the club house, which was a long bungalow, set in a clump of cottonwoods. There was an amplitude of veranda, and the rooms within were roughly furnished in Texas pine. The older people of the town looked upon the club with some suspicion as something new and untried. The younger element was just beginning to know the implements and vocabulary of golf. The first tee was only a few feet from the veranda, so that a degree of heroism and Christian resignation was essential in those who began their game under the eyes of a full gallery. There were the usual members of both sexes who talked a good deal about their swing without really having any worth mentioning; and there were others more given to reading the golf news in the golf papers at the club house, than to playing, to the end that they might discuss the game volubly without the discomfort of acquiring practical knowledge. The walls of the dining-room had not been smoothed or whitened. They were hung with prints which ranged in subject from golf to Gibson girls. Mabel had supplemented the meager furnishings of the club pantry with embellishments from her own house, and had given her own touch to the table. As her touch carried a certain style, her crystal and silver shone to good advantage under the lamps which she had substituted for the bare incandescents of the room. The young man from Keokuk who was, just then, as the gossips said, "devoted" to Mabel, had supplied a prodigal array of flowers, ordered by telegraph from Chicago for the occasion. The table was served by colored men, who had been previously subsidized by Mabel, in violation of the club rules; and they accordingly made up in zeal what they lacked in skill. Mabel talked a great deal about informality, and drove her guests into the dining-room without any attempt at order, and they found their name-cards with the surprises and exclamations which usually characterize that proceeding.