A Damsel in Distress

"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?"