[Illustration:  “Oh, tell me, little ball, is it ta-ta or good-by?”]

He pronounced the last word with a settled conviction, and drove another long, straight drive.  Pickings, thrilled at the possibility of another miracle, sliced badly.

“This is one of the most truly delightful holes of a picturesque course,” said Booverman, taking out an approaching cleek for his second shot.  “Nothing is more artistic than the tiny little patch of putting-green under the shaggy branches of the willows.  The receptive graveyard to the right gives a certain pathos to it, a splendid, quiet note in contrast to the feeling of the swift, hungry river to the left, which will now receive and carry from my outstretched hand this little white floater that will float away from me.  No matter; I say again the fourth green is a thing of ravishing beauty.”

This second shot, low and long, rolled up in the same unvarying line.

“On the green,” said Pickings.

“Short,” said Booverman, who found, to his satisfaction, that he was right by a yard.

“Take your time,” said Pickings, biting his nails.

“Rats!  I’ll play it for a five,” said Booverman.

His approach ran up on the line, caught the rim of the cup, hesitated, and passed on a couple of feet.

“A four, anyway,” said Pickings, with relief.

“I should have had a three,” said Booverman, doggedly.  “Any one else would have had a three, straight on the cup.  You’d have had a three, Picky; you know you would.”

Pickings did not answer.  He was slowly going to pieces, forgetting the invincible stoicism that is the pride of the true golfer.

“I say, take your time, old chap,” he said, his voice no longer under control.  “Go slow! go slow!”

“Picky, for the first four years I played this course,” said Booverman, angrily, “I never got better than a six on this simple three-hundred-and-fifty-yard hole.  I lost my ball five times out of seven.  There is something irresistibly alluring to me in the mosquito patches to my right.  I think it is the fond hope that when I lose this nice new ball I may step inadvertently on one of its hundred brothers, which I may then bring home and give decent burial.”

Pickings, who felt a mad and ungolfish desire to entreat him to caution, walked away to fight down his emotion.

“Well?” he said, after the click of the club had sounded.

“Well,” said Booverman, without joy, “that ball is lying about two hundred and forty yards straight up the course, and by this time it has come quietly to a little cozy home in a nice, deep hoof track, just as I found it yesterday afternoon.  Then I will have the exquisite pleasure of taking my niblick, and whanging it out for the loss of a stroke.  That’ll infuriate me, and I’ll slice or pull.  The best thing to do, I suppose, would be to play for a conservative six.”

When, after four butchered shots, Pickings had advanced to where Booverman had driven, the ball lay in clear position just beyond the bumps and rills that ordinarily welcome a long shot.  Booverman played a perfect mashy, which dropped clear on the green, and ran down a moderate put for a three.