“And I’ll do it,” I said to Bob, who had trotted up.  I often make Bob the recipient of my confidences.  He listens appreciatively, and never interrupts.  And he never has grievances of his own.  If there is one person I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

“Bob,” I said, running his tail through my fingers, “listen to me, my old University chum, for I have matured a dark scheme.  Don’t run away.  You know you don’t really want to go and look at that chicken.  Listen to me.  If I am in form this afternoon, and I feel in my bones that I shall be, I shall nurse the professor.  I shall play with him.  Do you understand the principles of Match play at Golf, Robert?  You score by holes, not strokes.  There are eighteen holes.  All right, how was I to know that you knew that without my telling you?  Well, if you understand so much about the game, you will appreciate my dark scheme.  I shall toy with the professor, Bob.  I shall let him get ahead, and then catch him up.  I shall go ahead myself, and let him catch me up.  I shall race him neck and neck till the very end.  Then, when his hair has turned white with the strain, and he’s lost a couple of stone in weight, and his eyes are starting out of his head, and he’s praying—­ if he ever does pray—­to the Gods of Golf that he may be allowed to win, I shall go ahead and beat him by a hole. I’ll teach him, Robert.  He shall taste of my despair, and learn by proof in some wild hour how much the wretched dare.  And when it’s all over, and he’s torn all his hair out and smashed all his clubs, I shall go and commit suicide off the Cob.  Because, you see, if I can’t marry Phyllis, I shan’t have any use for life.”

Bob wagged his tail cheerfully.

“I mean it,” I said, rolling him on his back and punching him on the chest till his breathing became stertorous.  “You don’t see the sense of it, I know.  But then you’ve got none of the finer feelings.  You’re a jolly good dog, Robert, but you’re a rank materialist.  Bones and cheese and potatoes with gravy over them make you happy.  You don’t know what it is to be in love.  You’d better get right side up now, or you’ll have apoplexy.”

It has been my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate nothing, nor set down aught in malice.  Like the gentleman who played euchre with the Heathen Chinee, I state but facts.  I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor’s peace of mind.  I am not always good and noble.  I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.

I felt ruthless towards the professor.  I cannot plead ignorance of the golfer’s point of view as an excuse for my plottings.  I knew that to one whose soul is in the game as the professor’s was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all other agonies.  I knew that, if I scraped through by the smallest possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o’ nights broken.  He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only used his iron instead of his mashie at the tenth, all would have been well; that, if he had putted more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of his brassey throughout might have given him something to live for.  All these things I knew.