Five minutes later he rejoined me, carrying two sets of clubs.

“Hallo!” he remarked in surprise.  “I didn’t know you’d brought your family.  Introduce me.”

“Mabel,” I said, “and Lucy—­our caddies.”

“Girls?”

“They have that appearance.  Why not?”

“They’ll cramp my style horribly; I like to be free.”

“Can’t you be free in French for once?”

“Most unsatisfying.  Why didn’t you get boys?”

“The caddy-master says (a) girls are better; (b) he has no boys; (c) all the boys he has are booked by plutocrats with season tickets.”

“Oh, all right.  Here are your clubs—­the pro. gave me the only two sets he had available.  You’re a bit taller than I am, so I’ve given you the long ones.”

I looked at them critically.

“Doesn’t a pair of stilts go with them?” I asked.

“Well, mine are worse.  Just a bundle of toothpicks.  Here, catch hold, Lucy.”

Mabel teed up for me.  I selected a driver about the length of a telegraph pole and swept my ball away.  It stopped just short of the first bunker.

Haynes bent himself double to address his ball, but straightened up while swinging and missed it by a foot.  At the second attempt he hooked it over square-leg’s head on to the fairway of the eighteenth hole.

“Sacre bleu!” he said with very fair freedom, “I’m not going all that way after it.  Lucy, run and fetch it, there’s a dear.”

Lucy, highly scandalized at the idea of losing a hole so tamely, started off; Mabel and Haynes and I went after my ball.

I took the mashie, because I distrusted my ability to carry the bunker with another telegraph pole.  That mashie would have been about the right length for me if I could have stood on a chair while making my stroke.  As it was it entered the ground two feet behind the ball and emerged, with a superb divot, just in front.

“Aren’t there any short clubs in the bag, Mabel?” I asked.  She handed me a straight-faced putter ...

Five strokes later I picked my ball up out of the bunker.

“I’m over-exerting myself,” I said.  “We’ll call that hole a half.”

Neither of us was satisfied with his tee shot at the next hole.  I picked my ball out of a gorse-bush, and Haynes rescued his from a drain.  Then we strolled amicably towards the third tee.  Our caddies, unused to such methods, followed reluctantly.

“Was that ’ole ’alved, too, Sir?” piped Mabel with anxious interest.

“It’s a nice point.  I hardly know.  Why?”

She hung her head and blushed.  A sudden suspicion struck me.

“Mabel,” I said sternly, “are you—­can you be—­betting on this game?”

“Yes, Sir,” she answered with a touch of defiance.  “Boys always does.”

I told Haynes, who appeared profoundly shocked.

“Good G——!  I mean, Mon dieu!” he exclaimed.  “What are we doing?”