If Marshall’s hope for eternal salvation depended on applying at the pearly gates at a specified time, he would spend eternity in the other place on account of being thirty minutes late.  Knowing this to be his habit, we always provide against it.  If the club house ever catches on fire, we shall lose Marshall, and he is a splendid good fellow.

Marshall’s wife informs me it took him thirty weeks to propose after he had made up his mind to do so, and that after the wedding day was set it was necessary to postpone the ceremony thirty days in order to permit him to attend to some trifling business affairs.  We call him “Thirty” Marshall, and it takes him thirty seconds to smile in appreciation of the jest.  But he plays a good game of golf, with at least four deliberate practise swings before each stroke at the ball.

Chilvers wanted to have a team hitched up and ride over in the club bus.  He said it tired him to walk.  We vetoed that proposition, and Chilvers stopped twice to rest on the half-mile jaunt to Bishop’s.

Chilvers thinks nothing of playing twice around Woodvale, a distance of not less than ten miles, but when in the city he takes a cab or a street car when compelled to go a few blocks.  When there is no ball ahead of him he is the most fatigued man of my acquaintance, but he can stride over golf links from daybreak until it is so dark you cannot see the ball, and quit as fresh as when he started.  There are others like Chilvers.

I walked with Mrs. Harding.  I had a good chance to walk with Miss Harding, but wished to show Carter that it was a matter of indifference to me.  More than that, it occurred to me it was not a bad plan to become better acquainted with Mrs. Harding.

The man who gets Mrs. Harding for a mother-in-law will be fortunate.  None of the thrusts and jibes of the alleged funny men will apply to her as a mother-in-law.

One would not readily identify Mrs. Harding as the wife of a famous railway magnate.  Wealth certainly has not turned her motherly head.  Of course, she is a little woman.  Huge men such as Harding invariably select dolls of women for helpmates.  She is round, smiling, pretty, and thoughtful, and I like her immensely.

We were approaching the Bishop place.  The orchard trees were covered with fruit.  Some of the tomatoes showed the red of their fat cheeks through the green of their foliage.  Miss Lawrence had started with LaHume, but under some pretext left him and was with Carter and Miss Harding, and I doubt if Carter was pleased with that evidence of his popularity.  LaHume walked with Miss Ross and talked and laughed, but I could see he was angry.

It suddenly occurred to me that Miss Lawrence would probably meet Bishop’s hired man, Wallace, and I presume LaHume was thinking of the same thing.  It was apparent they had quarrelled over something.

Marshall and Chilvers were together, their wives trailing on behind, as usual.  The way these two married men neglect these lovely women makes me angry every time I am out with them, but the ladies do not seem to care, and I presume it is none of my business.