“A missed ball counts a stroke,” laughed Carter.

“Are you sure that’s the rule?”

We all assured him there was not the slightest doubt of it.

“All that I can say is that it’s a fool rule,” he protested, “but at that, one missed swipe cuts little figure with me.  Here goes for number two!”

“Don’t press!” cautioned Carter.

“I’ll press all I darned please.  Keep your eyes on this one!”

He grazed the ball enough to make it roll not more than twenty feet into a clump of tall grass.  He looked blankly at it, but did not say a word.  Then he took a jack-knife from his pocket and cut two notches in the shaft of his club.

Carter drove out a good one, and I teed a ball for Miss Harding.  The lane is about a hundred yards away, and I thought of advising her to play short, but on reflection determined not to embarrass her by suggestions so early in the game.

The moment she took her stance and grasped her club I noted a difference in her style of play as compared with that of the preceding day.  Her club head came back with a free, even curve, and on the return she caught the ball with a good though not perfect follow through.  The ball carried straight and true over the lane, and did not stop rolling until it had passed the 130-yard mark.  It was a nice clean drive, and I smiled my approval.

“Good work, Kid,” grinned Harding, but he did not seem the least dismayed.  I should not care to play poker with him.  I lined out a beauty, and then Harding returned to the attack.

It took two strokes to get his ball out of the grass.  On his fifth shot the ball had a good lie about ten yards from the lane fence.  He smashed at it with a brassie, but drove too low.  The ball hit a fence post and bounded back fully seventy-five yards.  In five strokes he had not gained a foot.  After a combination of weird and wonderful shots he reached the green in twelve.

Harding’s putting was a revelation in how not to drop a ball in a cup.  He went back and forth over the hole like a shuttle.  This performance added six to his score, and he holed out in nineteen.  He was fighting mad, but did not say a word.  While the rest of us were holing out he sullenly added seventeen notches to his club.

I was astonished and pleased at the reversal in form shown by Miss Harding.  Two iron shots laid her ball on the green, her approach was a little weak, and she missed an easy two-foot putt, but she made the hole in seven, which is not at all bad for a woman.  Carter and I both got fours.

When Harding finally got his ball out of the old graveyard in playing the second hole there was a dispute as to how many strokes he had taken.  I counted twelve, but he claimed only nine, and we let him have his own way about it.  I did not dare to dispute with him, fearing that he might have a stroke of apoplexy.  He marked eleven new notches on his club shaft for this hole.