“You must have pretty lively caddies,” I threw out.

Adonis sighed.  “You’d think so, but that’s where we are always in trouble.  We’ve tried various schemes, but they haven’t any of ’em worked well.  At first we took our own Olympian boys.  We got the mother of the Gracchi to lend us her offspring, but they weren’t worth a rap.  Then we hired forty little devils from Hades, and we had to send them back inside of a week.  They were regular little imps.  They were cutting up monkey shines all the time, and waggled their horrid little tails so constantly that Jove himself couldn’t keep his eye on the ball—­and the language they used was something frightful.  You couldn’t trust them to clean your clubs, because there wasn’t any power anywhere that could keep them from running off with ’em; and in the matter of balls, they’d steal every blessed one they could lay their hands on.  We finally had to employ cherubs.  We’ve about sixty of ’em on hand now all the time, and they come as near being perfect as you could expect.  Ever see a cherub?”

“Only in pictures,” said I.  “They’re just heads with wings, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Adonis, “and, having no bodies, they’re seldom in the way, and some of the best of ’em can fly almost as fast as the ball.”

“How do they carry the bags?” I asked, much interested.

“They hang ’em about their necks, just above their wings,” Adonis explained, “but even they are not perfect.  They fly very carelessly, and often, in swooping about the sky, drop your clubs out of the bag and smash ’em; and they all look so infernally alike that you can never tell your own caddy from the other fellow’s, which is sometimes very confusing.”

“Still,” I put in, “a caddie with no pockets is a very safe person to intrust with golf balls.”

“That’s very true,” said Adonis, “and I suppose the cherubs make as good caddies as we can expect.  Caddies will be caddies, and that’s the end of it.  You can’t expect a caddie to do just right any more than you can expect water to flow uphill.  There are certain immutable laws of the universe which are as unchangeable in Olympus as on earth or in Hades.  Ice is cold, fire is hot, water is wet, and caddies are caddies.”

[Illustration:  THE OLYMPIAN LINKS]

“Very true,” said I, reflecting upon the ways of “Some Caddies I have Met.”  “What do you pay them a round?”

“One hundred and twenty-five dollars,” said Adonis.

“Cheap enough,” said I.  “But tell me, Adonis,” I continued, “who is your amateur champion?”

“Jupiter, of course,” said Adonis, with an impatient shake of his head.  “He’s champion of everything.  It’s one of his prerogatives.  We don’t any of us dare win a cup from him for fear he’ll use his power to destroy us.  That is one of the features of this Olympian life that is not pleasant—­though, for goodness’ sake, don’t say I told you!  He’d send me into perpetual exile if he knew I’d spoken that way.  He’s threatened to make me Governor-General of the Dipper half a dozen times already for things I’ve said, and I have to be very careful, or he’ll do it.”