"If I'd known you were such hot stuff," he declared generously, as
George holed his eighteenth putt from a distance of ten feet, "I'd
have got you to give me a stroke or two."
"I was on my game today," said George modestly. "Sometimes I slice
as if I were cutting bread and can't putt to hit a haystack."
"Let me know when one of those times comes along, and I'll take you
on again. I don't know when I've seen anything fruitier than the
way you got out of the bunker at the fifteenth. It reminded me of
a match I saw between--" Reggie became technical. At the end of his
observations he climbed into the grey car.
"Can I drop you anywhere?"
"Thanks," said George. "If it's not taking you out your way."
"I'm staying at Belpher Castle."
"I live quite near there. Perhaps you'd care to come in and have a
drink on your way?"
"A ripe scheme," agreed Reggie Ten minutes in the grey car ate up the distance between the links
and George's cottage. Reggie Byng passed these minutes, in the
intervals of eluding carts and foiling the apparently suicidal
intentions of some stray fowls, in jerky conversation on the
subject of his iron-shots, with which he expressed a deep
satisfaction.
"Topping little place! Absolutely!" was the verdict he pronounced
on the exterior of the cottage as he followed George in. "I've
often thought it would be a rather sound scheme to settle down in
this sort of shanty and keep chickens and grow a honey coloured
beard, and have soup and jelly brought to you by the vicar's wife
and so forth. Nothing to worry you then. Do you live all alone
here?"
George was busy squirting seltzer into his guest's glass.
"Yes. Mrs. Platt comes in and cooks for me. The farmer's wife next
door."
An exclamation from the other caused him to look up. Reggie Byng
was staring at him, wide-eyed.
"Great Scott! Mrs. Platt! Then you're the Chappie?"
George found himself unequal to the intellectual pressure of the
conversation.
"The Chappie?"
"The Chappie there's all the row about. The mater was telling me
only this morning that you lived here."
"Is there a row about me?"
"Is there what!" Reggie's manner became solicitous. "I say, my dear
old sportsman, I don't want to be the bearer of bad tidings and
what not, if you know what I mean, but didn't you know there was a
certain amount of angry passion rising and so forth because of you?
At the castle, I mean. I don't want to seem to be discussing your
private affairs, and all that sort of thing, but what I mean is...
Well, you don't expect you can come charging in the way you have
without touching the family on the raw a bit. The daughter of the
house falls in love with you; the son of the house languishes in
chokey because he has a row with you in Piccadilly; and on top of
all that you come here and camp out at the castle gates! Naturally
the family are a bit peeved. Only natural, eh? I mean to say,
what?"