" said Berry defiantly.

Jill and Daphne clasped one another and shrieked with laughter. Berry
stopped addressing the ball and gazed at them.

"Go on!" he said, nodding sardonic approval. "Provoke me to violence.
Goad me in the direction of insanity."

His caddie sniggered audibly. Berry turned to him.

"That's right, my boy. Make the most of your time. For you I have
already devised a lingering death."

"Look here, old chap," said I, "there's some mistake. I said I'd give
you a stroke a hole, not a divot a stroke."

Jonah strolled up. "Hullo!" he said, "making a new bunker, old man?
Good idea. Only a cleek's no good. Send the boy for a turf-cutter.
Quicker in the long run."

My brother-in-law regarded us scornfully. Then:

"What I want to know," he said, "is how the Punch office can spare you
both at the same time."

Daphne, Berry and I were playing a three-ball match, while Jill and
Jonah--who had sprained his wrist--were walking round with us. Berry
is rather good really, but just now he was wearing a patch over one
eye, which made him hopeless.

It was glorious spring weather on the coast of Devon. A little village
is Feth. Over and round about it the wind blows always, but the
cluster of white cottages and the old brown inn themselves lie close in
a hollow of the moorland, flanked by the great cliffs. Only the grey
church, set up on the heights, half a mile distant, endures the
tempests. The wind passes over Feth and is gone. A busy fellow, the
wind. He has no time to stop. Not so the sunshine. That lingers with
Feth all day, decking: the place gloriously. It is good to be a pet of
the sun. So are the gardens of Feth bright with flowers, the white
walls dazzling, the stream, that scrambles over brown pebbles to the
little bay, merry water.

Except for the natives, we had the place to ourselves. But then Feth
sees few visitors at any season. Sixteen miles from a station is its
salvation. True, there is Mote Abbey hard by--a fine old place with an
ancient deer-park and deep, rolling woods. Ruins, too, we had heard.
A roofless quire, a few grass-grown yards of cloister and the like.
Only the Abbot's kitchen was at all preserved. There's irony for you.
We were going to see them before we left. We were told that in summer
at the house itself parties assembled. But the family was away now.

The round of golf proceeded. "How many is that?" said Berry, as he
sliced into the se