The third hole requires a hundred-and-thirty-yard drive over the brook where I used to fish when a boy, and on the fourth hole you must carry the pond.  I came very near being drowned in that pond when a youngster, and I firmly believe that this is the reason I so often flub my drive on this hole.

But it is unnecessary to describe all of the eighteen holes.  The links are 3,327 yards out and 3,002 yards in, a long and sporty course, the delight of the true golfer and the terror of the duffer.

Woodvale is very exclusive.  The membership is limited, and hundreds of the best people in the city are on the waiting list.  Our club house is one of the finest in the country.  In addition to the links we have tennis courts, croquet grounds, bowling alleys and other games, but why one should care to indulge in any game other than golf is a mystery to me.

We also have bicycle and riding paths, flower gardens and all the luxuries and artificial scenic charms possible from the judicious expenditure of nearly four hundred thousand dollars.  Nothing can surpass it.

I live here during the golfing season, and one is unfortunate if he cannot play nine months in the year in Woodvale.  In the winter it is safer to go to Florida or California, and I propose to do so in the future rather than risk a repetition of last season’s heavy snows which made golf impossible for days at a time.

My suite of rooms in the club house is as finely furnished as any in the city, and the service and cuisine are excellent.

One saves a vast amount of time by living in such a club house as that of Woodvale.  The hours expended by golfers in travelling between their places of business and the links will foot up to an enormous total each year.  I remain here and thus save all that time.

Not that I neglect my business; far from it.  Once a week my private secretary comes to the club house from my office in the city.  He brings with him letters and other matters which imperatively demand my personal attention, and I sternly abandon all else for the time being.

On the days when he is here I play twenty-four holes instead of the usual thirty-six or more, but I find the change diverting rather than otherwise.  Without claiming special merit for an original discovery, I believe I have struck what may be termed the happy medium between work and relaxation.

I do not class the keeping of this diary as work for the reason that I shall not permit it to interfere with my golf.  When I feel disposed to make a note of an event, an idea or a score I shall do so, but I do not propose to be a slave to this diary.

I have just returned from a walk on the veranda.  Miss Ross came to me, greatly excited.

“They are here!” she exclaimed.

“Who; the Hardings?” I asked.

“No, their trunks are here.  And what do you think?”

“I would not make a guess,” I declared.