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Heavens! if he ever suspects it, he'll go into a thousand pieces." As a result, he missed his own ball completely, and then topped it for a bare fifty yards. "I've never seen you play so badly," said Booverman in a grumbling tone. "You'll end up by throwing me off." When they arrived at the green, Booverman's ball lay about thirty feet from the flag.
Booverman's drive had skimmed over the dried plain for a fair two hundred and seventy-five yards. His second shot, a full brassy, rolled directly on the green. "If he makes a four here," said Pickings to himself, "he'll be playing five under four no, by thunder! seven under four!" Suddenly he stopped, overwhelmed. "Why, he's actually around threes two under three now.
For the first time Booverman's shot went wide of the mark, straight into the trees that bordered the river to the left. "I'm sorry," said Pickings with a feeble groan. "My dear Picky, it had to come," said Booverman, with a shrug of his shoulders. "The ball is now lost, and all the score goes into the air, the most miraculous score any one ever heard of is nothing but a crushed egg!"
The fifteenth, a short pitch over the river, eighty yards to a slanting green entirely surrounded by more long grass, which gave it the appearance of a chin spot on a full face of whiskers, was Booverman's favorite hole. While Pickings held his eyes to the ground and tried to breathe in regular breaths, Booverman placed his ball, drove with the requisite back spin, and landed dead to the hole.
Booverman with a little care studied the ten-foot route to the hole and putted down. "Even threes!" said Pickings, leaning against a tree. "Blast that sixth hole!" said Booverman, exploding. "Think of what it might be, Picky what it ought to be!" Pickings retired hurriedly before the shaking approach of Booverman's frantic club. Incapable of speech, he waved him feebly to drive.
Their intimacy had arisen primarily from the fact that Pickings was the only man willing to listen to Booverman's restless dissertations on the malignant fates which seemed to pursue him even to the neglect of their international duties, while Booverman, in fair exchange, suffered Pickings to enlarge ad libitum on his theory of the rolling versus the flat putting-greens.
When they climbed the hill, Booverman's ball lay within three feet of the cup, which he easily putted out. "Two down," said Pickings, inaudibly. "By George! what a glorious start!" "Once in sixty thousand times," said Booverman to himself.
Pickings, despite all his classic conservatism, was so overcome with excitement that he twice putted over the hole for a shameful five. Booverman's face as he walked to the fourth tee was as joyless as a London fog. He placed his ball carelessly, selected his driver, and turned on the fidgety Pickings with the gloomy solemnity of a father about to indulge in corporal punishment.
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