lf-way I turned. I _felt_ Amy was not with me. She was standing
precisely where I had left her, her hat off, her pink tongue stuck out
in the direction of the caddies' shed.

"Amy!" I shouted, and the sound of my voice had an indescribably
incongruous and humiliating echo. "Amy, come here at once; how dare----"

Amy came ambling across the fairway, hat in hand, my bag of clubs left
where she had deposited them upside down in the tee-box for greater
freedom in responding with gestures of defiance to the chaff of the
enemy.

"Now look here," I said as Amy stood wonderingly before me; "I am very,
very disappointed in you--very, very angry. You wanted to earn your
living, I understood?"

Amy's brows darkened but her lips were slightly tremulous.

"Mother won't let me go into the laundry," she said sulkily, "'cos
father says I'm not sperienced enough, and Jimmy Baines give me 'is
cheek, so I give it 'im back."

Thus we stood surveying the situation, my girl-caddie and I. There
seemed at the moment only one sane way of ending it.

"Very well, Amy," I said dispassionately, "you had better run home and
tell your mother--tell your mother to come up to the house after dinner,
if there's anything she needs."

Amy resigned her position without a murmur; but before she went she
extracted two paintless, weary-looking golf-balls from the pocket of her
mauve skirt and offered me them for sixpence.

* * * * *

THE COTTAGE.

I know a wood on the top of a hill,
Hyacinth-carpeted March till May,
Where nights are wonderful, soft and still,
And a deep-sea twilight hangs all day;
The loving labour of fairy hands
Has made it heavenly fine to see,
And just outside it the cottage stands,
The cottage that doesn't belong to me.
A cottage, mind,
And I'm sure you'd find
It was damp and dirty and very confined;
Oh, quite an ordinary keeper's cottage
That doesn't belong to me.

Creatures people the wood at night;
Peaceable animals come and play;
Pan's own pipes, if you hear aright,
Charm you on as you go your way;
And all the Arcady folk of yore
Make songs of the days that used to be,
Which carry perhaps to the cottage door,
The cottage that doesn't belong to me.
But it's miles from town
And it's tumble-down,
And the woodwork's done and the slates are brown;
No one could really live in the cottage
That doesn't belong to me.