ke a tee."

Amy turned reluctantly and stared over my bent back at the Miss
Galbraiths, who were just starting for the ladies' course.

"First of all," I began more firmly, "you take a pinch of sand from this
box--so." Tee-making is not my forte, and I was painfully conscious that
I worked under the critical gaze of fully twenty expert eyes.

"If you please," said Amy in a brighter mood, "mother says I'll want
some things to clean up the sticks with."

I rose from my knees with a cricked back, but I had my Purple Spot
neatly balanced on a really creditable mound.

"We shall come to that presently, Amy," I explained. "When I have
finished playing you can take the clubs and make them nice and bright
with emery-paper."

Amy did not take this proposal encouragingly.

"Mother says I should want some turps," she informed me, "and brickdus'
and some whitin' to finish, and some methelay. She says she don't 'old
with the way Jimmy Baines and the rest of 'em does it. Mother says the
sticks should be cleaned proper, as they oughter be. She says she'd 'ave
give me the things, only she ain't got any, and I was to ask if it was
convenience to you to spare me the money to go to the village and get
'em. Then she'd show me 'ow."

I had discovered my driver behind Amy's back and was preparing to get
away, but these views of Amy's mother were so complete an innovation
that I paused. On the verge of a first drive I had never in my life
stopped to consider the ethics of golf-club cleaning. Why had not Amy a
pocket and a rag of sand-paper like resourceful Jimmy Baines? I don't
remember to have ever read anything on the niceties of the art of
scouring clubs. It is a subject on which the writers of golfing
articles--prolific enough, as Heaven knows, about other and more
negligible aspects of the game--seem to have adopted an attitude of
studied reticence.

"Look here, Amy," I said rather severely, "you really must not talk. You
must remember you are here to carry my clubs, not to tell me about your
mother. My iron clubs must be cleaned precisely as they always have been
cleaned. That is entirely your department of the game, and you must
stand at least three yards further away or I shall probably kill you."
Then I drove, sliced hideously, and landed in long grass a hundred yards
to the right.

Some premonition of feminine detachment prompted me to keep my eyes
rigidly on the tuft which concealed my ball, as I strode forward. But
ha