[Illustration: “PLAY!”]
had been in his article, and that she wouldn’t feel that she had done
her duty by the college unless she showed him the links, and that he
really must come with them and tell them whether the meadow-land was too
stiff a bit of ground to be gone over. And so Newbold found himself
trudging wearily along again between Miss Atterbury and Miss Yale, who
seemed as fresh as though they hadn’t moved that day. The links seemed
distressingly far off, and the holes absurdly distant from each other.
His arms ached so from tennis that he could scarcely hold the driver
Miss Yale gave him.
“I wish you would drive off this tee once--men do that sort of thing so
much better than girls,” she was saying, admiringly. “They don’t seem to
need any practice at all--just comes natural to them.” Newbold had a
very distinct impression that it hadn’t come at all natural to him, and
he would greatly have preferred not trying before Miss Yale and the knot
of young women who had drawn together at some little distance, and were
very obviously watching him under the shallowest pretence of hunting for
a lost ball. He felt desperately nervous, and his nervousness did not
tend to disappear when he made a frantic try at the ball, digging a hole
in the ground about a foot in front of the tee, and almost hitting Miss
Atterbury, who jumped back with a little cry very unlike her ordinary
calm self.
“I--I beg your pardon,” he began, desperately; but Miss Atterbury
assured him that she was all right, and urged him to try again. He did
so, and although he balanced himself cautiously on one foot and then on
the other, and snapped at the ball several times before trying to hit
it, and wobbled his driver after the most approved methods, he topped
his ball miserably, and had the mortification of seeing it land in a
most difficult hazard. And then he watched Miss Yale drive off with a
good backward swing of her club, which hit the ball “sweet and clean,”
and sent it a good ninety yards.
“Of course, as you said in your article,” remarked that young woman,
picking up her clubs and starting off energetically after the ball,
“this is no game for women. It is pre-eminently a man’s game, and a
woman’s short collar-bone is never such an obvious mistake as in golf. A
man can do so much with a driver or a cleek or a lofter, and the walking
is so easy for him, and he is so entirely independent of the weather.”
Newbold murmured inarticulate assents as he walked wearily by her. He
wondered if she could keep up that pace all around the course, and he
especially wondered how far around it was. He had a great deal of
difficulty in getting his ball out of the hazard and lofting it up a
steep hill, and he savagely wished that he had joined that golf club all
his friends were urging him to join, and decided firmly to do so before
he slept that night, and to engage the professional’s services for
himself, and to practise till he could drive a ball off without utterly
destroying all the turf in the vicinity.
They were on the second round, and Newbold was roughly calculating that
his erratic plays had made him walk about three miles, and was wondering
if he could live to get up the hill in front of him, when he saw Miss
Thayer and Miss Yale, who were three holes ahead of him, coming back
toward him.
“You look awfully tired and hot,” said Miss Thayer, sympathetically.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like golf? But what an absurd question!
Anyone who could write the article on athletics _you_ did must like it.
Only, I suppose, girls seem such duffers at it, to you!”
Newbold looked at her sharply. He had an uneasy suspicion that she was
laughing at him, but he was too tired to think of any way of finding out
whether she was or not, and so he walked on taciturnly and sufferingly.
“I have such a nice surprise for you,” ran on Miss Thayer. “But I won’t
tell you what it is yet.” She pulled out her watch. “It is just a
quarter to four now, and I think the surprise will not be ready until a
quarter after. Can you possibly wait that long?”
Newbold said he thought he might if he could sit down; but Miss Thayer
said she disapproved of getting over-heated and then cooling off
rapidly, and that she thought they had better keep moving until it was
time to see the “surprise.” So they strolled across the grounds, and the
two girls seemed to meet an astonishing number of friends, all going
their way. And while Newbold was vaguely wondering what their
destination might be, and what new torture was in store for him, he
heard Miss Yale say, in what sounded to him like the voice of an
avenging angel:
“I think we had better show Mr. Newbold our new running-track while we
are waiting. He is so interested in such things, and he might suggest
some improvements.” And then Newbold felt himself irresistibly compelled
to walk on farther and farther. He wondered sadly why they thought _he_
knew anything about running-tracks for girls, and decided that his
humorous remarks on the subject in his article had been a great
mistake.
“Do you think it’s a fair track?” inquired Miss Yale, anxiously, as they
came in sight of it. “It is an eight-lap track, you see, and of course a
great many girls only go around four times at first--girls get tired so
absurdly easy! Now I suppose men think nothing of making two miles at a
time--it is just play for them. Men are so strong--that is their
greatest fascination, I think,” she ran on enthusiastically. “Haven’t
you seen foot-ball players after a hard practice game start off and run
two miles around the track, and seem to think absolutely nothing of it?”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Newbold, unwarily and warmly. “Fellows are so
different from girls, you know. A girl cries when she’s tired, doesn’t
she? Well, a man just keeps going, you know, and doesn’t let it make any
difference to him.”
“I am so glad to hear that, Mr. Newbold,” said Miss Yale, with prompt
and suspicious sympathy, and a sudden firmness of tone, “because I
wanted dreadfully to ask you to try the track, but hated to do so, for I
knew you were tired--at least you look so. But since you just keep
going, and it doesn’t make any difference to you, why I would be so
awfully obliged if you would run around three or four times. I want to
see just how you hold your head and arms. I don’t believe we do it in
the best way, you know.”
It was a rare and pleasingly curious sight that Miss Yale and Miss
Thayer and a great many other young women assembled near the track,
apparently by a strange coincidence, looked upon. It is not often that
one has the chance of seeing an immaculately dressed youth, with flushed
and desperate countenance, tear madly around an eight-lap track in the
presence of a number of flatteringly attentive young women. It occurred
to Newbold as he dashed around and around that it would be far
preferable to keep going until he fainted away or dropped dead, than to
stop and encounter the remarks and glances of those young women. They
would at least feel sorry for him in that case, he thought, gloomily.
But even that modest and simple desire was not granted him. As he
started on the fifth lap he heard Miss Yale call to him to stop. He had
a wild inclination to pay no attention to her, but to keep going on and
on, but as he got nearer he saw her step out toward him and put up a
warning hand.
“Thank you so much,” she said, warmly. “I think we have all had a lesson
in running which we shall not forget soon. I hope you are not tired?”
she went on, anxiously.
Newbold said, “Oh, no!” but he felt very tired indeed. His feet ached
horribly and his head felt hot and dizzy, and there were queer, sharp
pains shooting through his body which made him think forebodingly of
pneumonia.
“The surprise is ready--Miss Atterbury is going to have the crew out for
your especial benefit!” went on Miss Yale, triumphantly. “Don’t you feel
complimented? And you are to pull Miss Thayer and myself about while
they go through a little practice for you. Not much, you know, but just
enough to show you the stroke and speed we get. The boat is a
beauty--but then, of course, you know so much more about it than we do!
I imagine from your article that you must pull an oar capitally. Miss
Thayer says a cat-boat is your especial hobby, though.”
“Did Miss Thayer say that?” began Newbold, hotly. “Beastly things, I
think--hate ’em!”
Miss Yale smiled incredulously and brightly at him.
“How modest you are!” she said, admiringly. “Ah! there is Miss
Atterbury!”
Newbold saw some one waving frantically at them.
“Come on!” exclaimed Miss Yale; “we want to see them start off--that’s
the best part.”
Newbold never remembered afterward how he got across the intervening
space, or how he got into a boat with the two young women. The first
thing he heard was Miss Atterbury asking him anxiously how he liked the
new sliding-seats, and what he thought of the proportions of the boat,
and about outriggers in general, and where he thought they could be
built best and cheapest. Newbold felt about as capable of instructing
her on such points as of judging the pictures at a Salon exhibit, and he
longed, with a longing born of utter exhaustion and desperation, to get
away. As he wearily pulled the heavy, unwieldy boat about after the
light practice-barge, which kept an appalling distance ahead of him, he
decided within himself that the physical development of women had been
carried to an absurd and alarming extent, and that men simply were not
in it with them when it came to endurance and enthusiasm, and that he
had made the mistake of his life when he wrote that article on athletics
in girls’ colleges, and that his chief might talk until he was blue in
the face before he would ever consent again to write about anything of
which he knew so little.
They were very disappointed when he told them firmly that he could not
stay to dinner or to the concert, but that he had a pressing engagement
that would take him back to the city. And they said that there were
still the Swedish gymnastics and basket-ball and pole-vaulting to see,
and that they were afraid he had not enjoyed himself or he would have
got rid of that engagement in some way; but he assured them impressively
that he had never spent a more instructive or peculiarly interesting
afternoon in his life.
Miss Thayer took him back to the station in her trap, and remarked on
how much shorter the way seemed with a good horse; and when she bade him
good-by she told him that she would be looking out for another article
in his paper, and that she would be much disappointed if his visit had
not inspired him to write something. To which Newbold replied that that
was his pressing engagement--he was going back to the city to write
another article on athletics in girls’ colleges, and that he thought it
would be different and better than the former one, but that he would not
put his initials to it this time.