Mrs. M'Cranky was pleased with her husband's thoughtfulness, knowing that he hated to be asked even to untie a rope; but he had little intention of ruffling his temper with the hated work. He was looking at his watch every few minutes, and asking if breakfast wasn't ready. "Hurry up," he said to the girl; "just bring in whatever you have ready. I smell ham; if it's not ready, I couldn't take any--I mean I don't wish ham this morning, unless it's--; look sharp with whatever you have." Mrs. M'Cranky was still in the bedroom, and he was hurrying with his breakfast as if he had only a few minutes to catch the morning train, so that he had just about finished when she entered. "You haven't finished already?" she said, as he rose from the table. "Yes; you've been a long time of dressing. Just help yourself to the ham, and I'll go out and have a saunter." He had great difficulty in keeping his hands from his watch, and in restraining himself to walk slowly out of the room with the necessary aimlessness of one who has nothing to do. In the lobby he was careful not to make a noise in lifting the clubs, and though a door in the back garden opened to the Links, he walked out by the front, as the dining-room window commanded a view of the back garden; and no sooner had he got away from the house than he doubled his pace, making up his mind that he wouldn't sneak away in that manner again, but just say he was going to golf--not thinking how much easier it is to get into deceit than to get out of it. "What's kept you?" said his friend Macfarlane at the teeing ground; "our number has been called." "Well, there's a lot of things to unpack, you know." This was literally true, but M'Cranky felt that his expression of it was fallacious, and, as he remembered reading at school, very nearly related to falsehood. It was humiliating, but he would put it all right to-morrow morning, and he might have acted up to his intentions if he had been able to adopt the proverb of thinking twice before speaking once; but when, next morning, Mrs. M'Cranky said, "You're not going to town in your knickerbockers, are you?" he hastily said: "Oh, I don't know; there's nobody in town you know; but, in fact, I wasn't thinking----" "Oh yes, keep them on. I like you in knickerbockers. I wish everybody wore them--gentlemen, I mean." The interruption was unfortunate for poor M'Cranky's resolution; he was screwing himself up to say that he wasn't thinking of going to town, and giving up the pretence of not being able to get away from business. He did not like the idea of going round the Links, continually looking about him in fear of meeting his wife; but she had no suspicion, as he walked out without clubs, having told his caddie to keep them for him; and when she said, "You're not going to town with these clumsy boots on? Put on your brown shoes; they are much neater," he mumbled something about hurting his feet when he had thick stockings on.