Five minutes later, wild-eyed and hilarious, they descended on the
clubhouse with the miraculous news. For an hour the assembled golfers
roared with laughter as the two stormed, expostulated, and swore to the
truth of the tale.
[Illustration: A committee carefully examined the books of the club]
They journeyed from house to house in a vain attempt to find some
convert to their claim. For a day they passed as consummate comedians,
and the more they yielded to their rage, the more consummate was their
art declared. Then a change took place. From laughing the educated town
of Stockbridge turned to resentment, then to irritation, and finally to
suspicion. Booverman and Pickings began to lose caste, to be regarded as
unbalanced, if not positively dangerous. Unknown to them, a committee
carefully examined the books of the club. At the next election another
treasurer and another secretary were elected.
Since then, month in and month out, day after day, in patient hope, the
two discredited members of the educated community of Stockbridge may be
seen, _accompanied by caddies_, toiling around the links in a desperate
belief that the miracle that would restore them to standing may be
repeated. Each time as they arrive nervously at the first tee and
prepare to swing, something between a chuckle and a grin runs through
the assemblage, while the left eyes contract waggishly, and a murmuring
may be heard,
"Even threes."
* * * * *
The Stockbridge golf-links is a course of ravishing beauty and the
Housatonic River, as has been said, goes wriggling around it as though
convulsed with merriment.