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His only consolation was that nobody else, not even the fellows who worked their way right through the jam and got seats in the front row where they could glare into her eyes and hang on her lips and all that sort of thing, seemed to be making any better progress.

And so matters went on till one day Eunice decided to take up golf. Her motive for doing this was, I believe, simply because Kitty Manders, who had won a small silver cup at a monthly handicap, receiving thirty-six, was always dragging the conversation round to this trophy, and if there was one firm article in Eunice Bray’s simple creed it was that she would be hanged if she let Kitty, who was by way of being a rival on a small scale, put anything over on her. I do not defend Eunice, but women are women, and I doubt if any of them really take up golf in that holy, quest-of-the-grail spirit which animates men. I have known girls to become golfers as an excuse for wearing pink jumpers, and one at least who did it because she had read in the beauty hints in the evening paper that it made you lissome. Girls will be girls.

Her first lessons Eunice received from the professional, but after that she saved money by distributing herself among her hordes of admirers, who were only too willing to give up good matches to devote themselves to her tuition. By degrees she acquired a fair skill and a confidence in her game which was not altogether borne out by results. From Ramsden Waters she did not demand a lesson. For one thing it never occurred to her that so poor-spirited a man could be of any use at the game, and for another Ramsden was always busy tooling round with little Wilberforce.

Yet it was with Ramsden that she was paired in the first competition for which she entered, the annual mixed foursomes. And it was on the same evening that the list of the draw went up on the notice board that Ramsden proposed.

The mind of a man in love works in strange ways. To you and to me there would seem to be no reason why the fact that Eunice’s name and his own had been drawn out of a hat together should so impress Ramsden, but he looked on it as an act of God. It seemed to him to draw them close together, to set up a sort of spiritual affinity. In a word, it acted on the poor fellow like a tonic, and that very night he went around to her house, and having, after a long and extremely interesting conversation with her aunt, contrived to get her alone, coughed eleven times in a strangled sort of way, and suggested that the wedding bells should ring out.

Eunice was more startled than angry.

“Of course, I’m tremendously complimented, Mr.—-” She had to pause to recall the name. “Mr.—-“

“Waters,” said Ramsden, humbly.

“Of course, yes. Mr. Waters. As I say, it’s a great compliment—-“

“Not at all!”

“A great compliment—-“

“No, no!” murmured Ramsden obsequiously.

“I wish you wouldn’t interrupt!” snapped Eunice with irritation. No girl likes to have to keep going back and trying over her speeches. “It’s a great compliment, but it is quite impossible.”

“Just as you say, of course,” agreed Ramsden.

“What,” demanded Eunice, “have you to offer me? I don’t mean money. I mean something more spiritual. What is there in you, Mr. Walter—-“

“Waters.”

“Mr. Waters. What is there in you that would repay a girl for giving up the priceless boon of freedom?”

“I know a lot about dried seaweed,” suggested Ramsden hopefully.

Eunice shook her head.

“No,” she said, “it is quite impossible. You have paid me the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman, Mr. Waterson—-“

“Waters,” said Ramsden. “I’ll write it down for you.”

“Please don’t trouble. I am afraid we shall never meet again—-“

“But we are partners in the mixed foursomes tomorrow.”