This division, always acute, had attained
now to the dimensions of a Schism. The rival sects treated one another
with a cold hostility.
Unfortunate episodes came to widen the breach. Mrs. Smethurst's house
adjoined the links, standing to the right of the fourth tee: and, as
the Literary Society was in the habit of entertaining visiting
lecturers, many a golfer had foozled his drive owing to sudden loud
outbursts of applause coinciding with his down-swing. And not long
before this story opens a sliced ball, whizzing in at the open window,
had come within an ace of incapacitating Raymond Parsloe Devine, the
rising young novelist (who rose at that moment a clear foot and a half)
from any further exercise of his art. Two inches, indeed, to the right
and Raymond must inevitably have handed in his dinner-pail.
To make matters worse, a ring at the front-door bell followed almost
immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing appearance
in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers who apologetically but firmly
insisted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what with the shock of
the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing
on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon's session
had to be classed as a complete frost.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25