Love Among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (the reading list book .TXT) 📕

Phyllis was waiting outside. She often went round the course with him.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “Have you been round with the professor?”

“Yes. We must have been in front of you. Father won his match.”

“So he was telling me. I was very glad to hear it.”

“Did you win, Mr. Garnet?”

“Yes. Pretty easily. My opponent had bad luck all through. Bunkers seemed to have a magnetic attraction for him.”

“So you and father are both in the semifinal? I hope you will play very badly.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yes, it does sound rude, doesn’t it? But father has set his heart on winning this year. Do you know that he has played in the final round two years running now?”

“Really?”

“Both times he was beaten by the same man.”

“Who was that? Mr. Derrick plays a much better game than anybody I have seen on these links.”

“It was nobody who is here now. It was a Colonel Jervis. He has not come to Combe Regis this year. That’s why father is hopeful.”

“Logically,” I said, “he ought to be certain to win.”

“Yes; but, you see, you were not playing last year, Mr. Garnet.”

“Oh, the professor can make rings round me,” I said.

“What did you go round in today?”

“We were playing match-play, and only did the first dozen holes; but my average round is somewhere in the late eighties.”

“The best father has ever done is ninety, and that was only once. So you see, Mr. Garnet, there’s going to be another tragedy this year.”

“You make me feel a perfect brute. But it’s more than likely, you must remember, that I shall fail miserably if I ever do play your father in the final. There are days when I play golf as badly as I play tennis. You’ll hardly believe me.”

She smiled reminiscently.

“Tom is much too good at tennis. His service is perfectly dreadful.”

“It’s a little terrifying on first acquaintance.”

“But you’re better at golf than at tennis, Mr. Garnet. I wish you were not.”

“This is special pleading,” I said. “It isn’t fair to appeal to my better feelings, Miss Derrick.”

“I didn’t know golfers had any where golf was concerned. Do you really have your off-days?”

“Nearly always. There are days when I slice with my driver as if it were a bread-knife.”

“Really?”

“And when I couldn’t putt to hit a haystack.”

“Then I hope it will be on one of those days that you play father.”

“I hope so, too,” I said.

“You hope so?”

“Yes.”

“But don’t you want to win?”

“I should prefer to please you.”

“Really, how very unselfish of you, Mr. Garnet,” she replied, with a laugh. “I had no idea that such chivalry existed. I thought a golfer would sacrifice anything to win a game.”

“Most things.”

“And trample on the feelings of anybody.”

“Not everybody,” I said.

At this point the professor joined us.

Some people do not believe in presentiments. They attribute that curious feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen to such mundane causes as liver, or a chill, or the weather. For my own part, I think there is more in the matter than the casual observer might imagine.

I awoke three days after my meeting with the professor at the clubhouse, filled with a dull foreboding. Somehow I seemed to know that that day was going to turn out badly for me. It may have been liver or a chill, but it was certainly not the weather. The morning was perfect⁠—the most glorious of a glorious summer. There was a haze over the valley and out to sea which suggested a warm noon, when the sun should have begun the serious duties of the day. The birds were singing in the trees and breakfasting on the lawn, while Edwin, seated on one of the flowerbeds, watched them with the eye of a connoisseur. Occasionally, when a sparrow hopped in his direction, he would make a sudden spring, and the bird would fly away to the other side of the lawn. I had never seen Edwin catch a sparrow. I believe they looked on him as a bit of a crank, and humoured him by coming within springing distance, just to keep him amused. Dashing young cock-sparrows would show off before their particular hen-sparrows, and earn a cheap reputation for daredevilry by going within so many yards of Edwin’s lair, and then darting away. Bob was in his favourite place on the gravel. I took him with me down to the Cob to watch me bathe.

“What’s the matter with me today, Robert, old son?” I asked him, as I dried myself.

He blinked lazily, but contributed no suggestion.

“It’s no good looking bored,” I went on, “because I’m going to talk about myself, however much it bores you. Here am I, as fit as a prizefighter, living in the open air for I don’t know how long, eating good plain food⁠—bathing every morning⁠—sea-bathing, mind you⁠—and yet what’s the result? I feel beastly.”

Bob yawned, and gave a little whine.

“Yes,” I said, “I know I’m in love. But that can’t be it, because I was in love just as much a week ago, and I felt all right then. But isn’t she an angel, Bob? Eh? Isn’t she? And didn’t you feel bucked when she patted you? Of course you did. Anybody would. But how about Tom Chase? Don’t you think he’s a dangerous man? He calls her by her Christian name, you know, and behaves generally as if she belonged to him. And then he sees her every day, while I have to trust to meeting her at odd times, and then I generally feel such a fool I can’t think of anything to talk about except golf and the weather. He probably sings duets with her after dinner, and you know what comes of duets after dinner.”

Here Bob, who had been trying for some time to find a decent excuse for getting away, pretended to see something of importance at the other end of the Cob, and trotted off to investigate it, leaving me to finish dressing by myself.

“Of course,” I