"No one can work as neatly as you, Withers," she said gaily, "and I shall ask you to do the most difficult part. I want you to sew my lovely poppies over the collar and facings of the jacket, just spacing them a little and making a dainty irregularity. And then Mary — won't you, Mary? — will do the same with the waistband while I put a border of them round the skirt, and my dear old dress will look quite new and lovely. I shall be at home to nobody, Withers, this afternoon, even if the Prince of Wales came and sat on my doorstep again. We'll all work together in the garden, shall we, and you and Mary must scold me if you think I'm not working hard enough. It will be delicious in the garden."
Thanks to this pleasant plan, there was not much opportunity for Withers and Mary to be idle . . .
* * *
Just about the time that this harmonious party began their work, a far from harmonious couple were being just as industrious in the grand spacious bunker in front of the tee to the last hole on the golf links. It was a beautiful bunker, consisting of a great slope of loose, steep sand against the face of the hill, and solidly shored up with timber. The Navy had been in better form today, and after a decisive victory over the Army in the morning and an indemnity of half a crown, its match in the afternoon, with just the last hole to play, was all square. So Captain Puffin, having the honour, hit a low, nervous drive that tapped loudly at the timbered wall of the bunker, and cuddled down below it, well protected from any future assault.
"Phew! That about settles it," said Major Flint boisterously. "Bad place to top a ball! Give me the hole?"
This insolent question needed no answer, and Major Flint drove, skying the ball to a prodigious height. But it had to come to earth sometime, and it fell like Lucifer, son of the morning, in the middle of the same bunker . . . So the Army played three more, and, sweating profusely, got out. Then it was the Navy's turn, and the Navy had to lie on its keel above the boards of the bunker, in order to reach its ball at all, and missed it twice.
"Better give it up, old chap," said Major Flint. "Unplayable."
"Then see me play it," said Captain Puffin, with a chewing motion of his jaws.
"We shall miss the tram," said the Major, and, with the intention of giving annoyance, he sat down in the bunker with his back to Captain Puffin, and lit a cigarette. At his third attempt nothing happened; at the fourth the ball flew against the boards, rebounded briskly again into the bunker, trickled down the steep, sandy slope and hit the Major's boot.
"Hit you, I think," said Captain Puffin. "Ha! So it's my hole, Major!"
Major Flint had a short fit of aphasia. He opened and shut his mouth and foamed. Then he took a half-crown from his pocket.
"Give that to the Captain," he said to his caddie, and without looking round, walked away in the direction of the tram. He had not gone a hundred yards when the whistle sounded, and it puffed away homewards with ever-increasing velocity.
Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back to the clubhouse to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two, no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the clubhouse, one after the other, each unconscious of the other's presence. Summoning his last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There was lemonade and stone ginger-beer . . . You might as well have offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched from his locker a large flask of the required elixir, and proceeded to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major's rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation.
Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had penetrated halfway down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more) and he wouldn't have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink. He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his throat — it wanted more than that to clear it — and capitulated.
"Upon my word, Puffin, I'm ashamed of myself for — ha! — for not taking my defeat better," he said. "A man's no business to let a game ruffle him."
Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh.
"Oh, that's all right, Major," he said. "I know it's awfully hard to lose like a gentleman."
He let this sink in, then added:
"Have a drink, old chap?"
Major Flint flew to his feet.
"Well, thank ye, thank ye," he said. "Now where's that soda water you offered me just now?" he shouted to the steward.
The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.
Major Flint in his eagerness had put most of his moustache into the life-giving tumbler, and dried it on his handkerchief.
"After all, it was a most amusing incident," he said. "There was I with my back turned, waiting for you to give it up, when your bl — wretched little ball hit my foot. I must remember that. I'll serve you with the same spoon someday, at least I would if I thought it sportsmanlike. Well, well, enough said. Astonishing good whisky, that of yours."
Captain Puffin helped himself to rather more than half of what now remained in the flask.
"Help yourself, Major," he said.
"Well, thank ye, I don't mind if I do," he said, reversing the flask over the tumbler. "There's a good tramp in front of us now that the last tram has gone. Tram and tramp! Upon my word, I've half a mind to telephone for a taxi."
This, of course, was a direct hint. Puffin ought clearly to pay for a taxi, having won two half-crowns today. This casual drink did not constitute the usual drink stood by the winner, and paid for with cash over the counter. A drink (or two) from a flask was not the same thing . . . Puffin naturally saw it in another light. He had paid for the whisky which Major Flink had drunk (or owed for it) in his wine-merchant's bill. That was money just as much as a florin pushed across the counter. But he was so excessively pleased with himself over the adroitness with which he had claimed the last hole, that he quite overstepped the bounds of his habitual parsimony.
"Well, you trot along to the telephone and order a taxi," he said, "and I'll pay for it."
"Done with you," said the other.
Their comradeship was now on its most felicitous level again, and they sat on the bench outside the clubhouse till the arrival of their unusual conveyance.
"Lunching at the Poppits' tomorrow?" asked Major Flint.
"Yes. Meet you there? Good. Bridge afterwards, I suppose."
"Sure to be. Wish there was a chance of more redcurrant fool. That was a decent tipple, all but the redcurrants. If I had had all the old brandy that was served for my ration in one glass, and all the champagne in another, I should have been better content."
Captain Puffin was a great cynic in his own misogynistic way.