He had evidently been looking in our direction, and he followed the flight of the ball.  He walked up to it.

“Are you playing bounds?” he shouted, lifting his cap.

“Yes!” answered LaHume, “throw it back!”

Wallace carried a stout stick of some kind in his hand.  He looked at the end of it critically, placed the ball on a clod of soil, glanced at us and called “Fore!” and then lofted that ball with as clean a shot as ever I saw, dropping it almost at LaHume’s feet.  He bowed again, twirled the stick about his fingers, and then turned and went toward the farmhouse.

[Illustration:  “Fore”]

“Well, what do you think of the cold nerve of that clodhopper?” exclaimed LaHume, staring at the retreating figure of Wallace.  “I presume he has ruined that new ball.”

“Not with that stroke,” I said.  “I wish I could make as good an approach with any club in my bag as he did with that improvised cane.”

I picked up the ball and found that there was not a blemish on it.

“Wasn’t he a handsome young gentleman?” murmured Miss Lawrence, whose eyes had been fixed on Wallace until he vanished behind a clump of trees.  “Who is he?”

“Gentleman?” laughed LaHume, teeing the ball.  “He’s a farm labourer; old Bishop’s hired man.  One of his duties is to deliver milk every morning at the club house.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Lawrence.  “I presume it is impossible for him to attend to such duties and remain a gentleman.”

“Not impossible, but highly improbable,” laughed young LaHume, unaware that he was treading on thin ice.

“My father made his start in that way, and before he died there were many who called themselves gentlemen who were glad to associate with him,” declared Miss Lawrence with a warmth uncommon to her.  “What did your father do?”

“Really now, I did not mean anything,” stammered LaHume, the red flushing through the tan of his face.  It suddenly dawned on me that there was a period in the life of my father when he worked as a hired man in order to earn the money with which to marry my mother, and that from this humble start he was able finally to acquire the ancestral Smith farm, then in the possession of a more wealthy branch of the family.  I made common cause with Miss Lawrence, and I did it with better grace from the fact that I resent the airs assumed by LaHume.

“LaHume’s father founded the roadhouse down yonder,” I said, pointing towards a resort which yet goes by the LaHume name, and one which does not enjoy a reputation any too savory.  Of course this is not the fault of the elder LaHume, who has since made a fortune in the hotel business.  I could see that the shot went home.

“I say, Smith, let’s play golf and cut out this family history business,” protested LaHume, who was fighting angry.  “It is your shot, Miss Lawrence.”

“Don’t you think he is handsome, Mr. Smith?” she asked.