clubhouse all the time."

"The poor kid!" murmured Patricia. "I never noticed him much before."

"Beastly overbearing sort of chap," said Merle.

"Isn't he?" said Patricia. "I couldn't help but notice that." She
shifted her eyes sidewise at Merle. "I do wish some of the folks could
have been there," she added, listlessly.

"Is that so?" he demanded, remembering then that this girl was never to
be trusted, even in moods seemingly honeyed. He spurted the new roadster
in rank defiance of Newbern's lately enacted ordinance regulating the
speed of motor vehicles.

Yet the night must have brought him counsel, for he appeared the next
afternoon--though without Patricia--to beseech further instruction from
the competent brother. He did this rather humbly for one of his station.

"I know my game must be pretty rotten," he said. "Maybe you can show me
one or two more little things."

"I'll show you the same old things over again," said Wilbur, overjoyed
at this friendly advance, and forthwith he did.

For a week they played the course together, not only to the betterment
of Merle's technic, but to the promotion of a real friendliness between
this Whipple and a mere Cowan. They became as brothers again, seeming to
have leaped the span of years during which they had been alien. During
those years Wilbur had kept secret his pride in his brother, his
exultation that Merle should have been called for this high eminence and
not found wanting. There had been no one to whom he could reveal it,
except to Winona, perhaps in little flashes. Now that they were alone in
a curious renewal of their old intimacy, he permitted it to shine forth
in all its fullness, and Merle became pleasantly aware that this
sharp-speaking brother--where golf was concerned--felt for him something
much like worship. The glow warmed them both as they loitered over the
course, stopping at leisure to recall ancient happenings of their
boyhood together. Far apart now in their points of view, the expensively
nurtured Merle, and Wilbur, who had grown as he would, whose education
was of the street and the open, they found a common ground and rejoiced
in their contact.

"I don't understand why we haven't seen more of each other all these
years," said Merle on a late day of this renewed companionship. "Of
course I've been away a lot--school and trips and all that."

"And I'm still a small-towner," said Wilbur, though delightedly. It was
worth being a small-town