As a matter of fact she was my gardener's chauffeur-son's girl. The
junior parent having been living chiefly on my garden or in my kitchen,
and now being at the end of his resources, it was suggested that I
should give his Amy a job. The proposal came from my wife, who had been
victualling Amy's mother and Amy's baby sister for some weeks. An
illuminating correspondence in the Press had done the rest.
For her first appointment at the tee Amy was nearly twenty minutes late,
and when she arrived it was in a mauve skirt, green stockings, an ochre
sporting coat and a hat which had once been my wife's. Seen against the
background of the native boy caddies, Amy might have been described as
picturesque.
"Mother says," said Amy, as we introduced ourselves--"Mother says she's
sorry you should be kep', but baby's used to going off, me rocking 'im,
and she was that busy, it being the day what she mostly washes."
"Very well, Amy," I said, realising the situation, "we must do better
next time. The gentleman I was to play would not wait; but perhaps, if
we just went round together, you could get an idea of your--your
duties."
Amy accepted my suggestion and my bag of clubs with an abstracted sniff.
She seemed to be more closely engaged in retorting by manual signals to
the distant provocations of her male rivals.
"Now, Amy," I reminded her gently, "you must learn how to make a tee."
Amy turned reluctantly and stared over my bent back at the Miss
Galbraiths, who were just starting for the ladies' course.
"First of all," I began more firmly, "you take a pinch of sand from this
box--so." Tee-making is not my forte, and I was painfully conscious that
I worked under the critical gaze of fully twenty expert eyes.
"If you please," said Amy in a brighter mood, "mother says I'll want
some things to clean up the sticks with."
I rose from my knees with a cricked back, but I had my Purple Spot
neatly balanced on a really creditable mound.
"We shall come to that presently, Amy," I explained. "When I have
finished playing you can take the clubs and make them nice and bright
with emery-paper."
Amy did not take this proposal encouragingly.
"Mother says I should want some turps," she informed me, "and brickdus'
and some whitin' to finish, and some methelay. She says she don't 'old
with the way Jimmy Baines and the rest of 'em does it. Mother says the
sticks should be cleaned proper, as they oughter be. She says she'd 'ave
give me the things, only she ain't got any, and I was to ask if it was
convenience to you to spare me the money to go to the village and get
'em. Then she'd show me 'ow."
I had discovered my driver behind Amy's back and was preparing to get
away, but these views of Amy's mother were so complete an innovation
that I paused. On the verge of a first drive I had never in my life
stopped to consider the ethics of golf-club cleaning. Why had not Amy a
pocket and a rag of sand-paper like resourceful Jimmy Baines? I don't
remember to have ever read anything on the niceties of the art of
scouring clubs. It is a subject on which the writers of golfing
articles--prolific enough, as Heaven knows, about other and more
negligible aspects of the game--seem to have adopted an attitude of
studied reticence.
"Look here, Amy," I said rather severely, "you really must not talk. You
must remember you are here to carry my clubs, not to tell me about your
mother. My iron clubs must be cleaned precisely as they always have been
cleaned. That is entirely your department of the game, and you must
stand at least three yards further away or I shall probably kill you."
Then I drove, sliced hideously, and landed in long grass a hundred yards
to the right.
Some premonition of feminine detachment prompted me to keep my eyes
rigidly on the tuft which concealed my ball, as I strode forward. But
half-way I turned. I _felt_ Amy was not with me. She was standing
precisely where I had left her, her hat off, her pink tongue stuck out
in the direction of the caddies' shed.
"Amy!" I shouted, and the sound of my voice had an indescribably
incongruous and humiliating echo. "Amy, come here at once; how dare----"
Amy came ambling across the fairway, hat in hand, my bag of clubs left
where she had deposited them upside down in the tee-box for greater
freedom in responding with gestures of defiance to the chaff of the
enemy.
"Now look here," I said as Amy stood wonderingly before me; "I am very,
very disappointed in you--very, very angry. You wanted to earn your
living, I understood?"
Amy's brows darkened but her lips were slightly tremulous.
"Mother won't let me go into the laundry," she said sulkily, "'cos
father says I'm not sperienced enough, and Jimmy Baines give me 'is
cheek, so I give it 'im back."
Thus we stood surveying the situation, my girl-caddie and I. There
seemed at the moment only one sane way of ending it.
"Very well, Amy," I said dispassionately, "you had better run home and
tell your mother--tell your mother to come up to the house after dinner,
if there's anything she needs."
Amy resigned her position without a murmur; but before she went she
extracted two paintless, weary-looking golf-balls from the pocket of her
mauve skirt and offered me them for sixpence.
* * * * *