And it was true that he now consorted daily through a profitable summer with people who had heretofore been but names to him.  But Winona had neglected to observe that he would meet them not as a social equal but as a hireling.  This was excusable in her, because she had only the vaguest notions of golf or of the interrelations between caddie and player.  One informed in the ways of the sport could have warned her that caddies inevitably become cynical toward all people of the sort one cares to meet.  Compelled by a rigid etiquette to silent, unemotional formality, they boil interiorly with contempt for people of the better sort, not only because their golf is usually atrocious—­such as every caddie brilliantly surpasses in his leisure moments—­but because the speech provoked by their inveterate failures is commonly all too human.

So the results of Wilbur Cowan’s contact with people Winona would approve, enduring for a mercifully brief summer and autumn, were not what Winona had fondly preconceived.  He had first been attracted to the course—­a sweet course, said the golf-architect who had laid it out over the rolling land south of town—­by the personality of one John Knox McTavish, an earnest Scotchman of youngish middle age, procured from afar to tell the beginning golfers of Newbern to keep their heads down and follow through and not to press the ball.  As John spoke, it was “Don’t pr-r-r-r-ess th’ ball.”  He had been chosen from among other candidates because of his accent.  He richly endowed his words with r’s, making more than one grow where only one had grown before.  It was this vocal burriness that drew the facile notice of Wilbur.  He delighted to hear John McTavish talk, and hung about the new clubhouse, apparently without purpose, until John not only sanctioned but besought his presence, calling him Laddie and luring him with tales of the monstrous gains amassed by competent caddies.

The boy lingered, though from motives other than mercenary.  His cup was full when he could hear John’s masterful voice addressed to Mrs. Rapp, Junior, or another aspirant.

“R-r-remember, mum, th’ ar-r-r-um close, th’ head down—­and don’t pr-r-r-ress th’ ball.”

Yet he was presently allured by a charm even more imperious, the charm of the game itself.  For John at odd moments would teach him the use of those strange weapons, so that he had the double thrill of standing under the torrential r’s addressed to himself and of feeling the sharp, clean impact of the club head upon a ball that flew a surprising distance.  His obedient young muscles soon conformed to the few master laws of the game.  He kept down, followed through and forebore, against all human instinct, to press the ball.

By the end of Newbern’s golfing season he was able to do almost unerringly what so many of Newbern’s better sort did erratically and at intervals.  And the talk of John Knox McTavish about the wealth accruing to alert caddies had proved to be not all fanciful.  In addition to the stipend earned for conventional work, there were lost balls in abundance to be salvaged and resold.