A Few Quick Ones

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Book: A Few Quick Ones Read Online Free PDF
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
She seemed just to give a flick of the wrist and the ball fell a foot from the pin and flopped there like a poached egg. It struck me immediately that here was someone whose methods I could study to my great advantage. The chip is my weak spot. For the last ten days or so, accordingly, I have been following her about the course, watching her every movement, and yesterday we happened to fall into conversation and I confided my ambition to her. With a hearty laugh, she told me that if I wanted to become scratch I had come to the right shop. She said that she could make a scratch player out of a cheese mite, provided it had not lost the use of its limbs, and gave as evidence of her tuitionary skill the fact that she had turned a man named Sidney McMurdo from a mere blot on the local scene into something which in a dim light might be mistaken for a golfer. I haven't met McMurdo."
    "He is away at the moment. He has gone to attend the sickbed of an uncle. He will be back to play for the club championship."
    "As hot as that, is he?"
    "Yes, I suppose he would be about the best man we have." "Scratch?"
    "Plus one, I believe, actually."
    "And what was he before Miss Flack took him in hand?"
    "His handicap, if I remember rightly, was fifteen."
    "You don't say?" said Harold Pickering, his face lighting up. "Was it, by Jove? Then this begins to look like something. If she could turn him into such a tiger, there's a chance for me. We start the lessons tomorrow."
    I did not see Harold Pickering for some little time after this, an attack of lumbago confining me to my bed, but stories of his prowess filtered through to my sickroom, and from these it was abundantly evident that his confidence in Agnes Flack's skill as an instructress had not been misplaced. He won a minor competition with such ease that his handicap was instantly reduced to eight. Then he turned in a series of cards which brought him down to four. And the first thing I saw on entering the clubhouse on my restoration to health was his name on the list of entrants for the club championship. Against it was the word "scratch".
    I can remember few things that have pleased me more. We are all sentimentalists at heart, and the boy's story had touched me deeply. I hastened to seek him out and congratulate him. I found him practising approach putts on the ninth green, but when I gripped his hand it was like squeezing a wet fish. His whole manner was that of one who has not quite shaken off the effects of being struck on the back of the head by a thunderbolt. It surprised me for a moment, but then I remembered that the achievement of a great ambition often causes a man to feel for a while somewhat filleted. The historian Gibbon, if you recall, had that experience on finishing his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I saw the same thing once in a friend of mine who had just won a Littlewood's pool.
    "Well," I said cheerily, "I suppose you will now be leaving us? You will want to hurry off to Miss Rockett with the great news.'
    He winced and topped a putt.
    "No," he said, "I'm staying on here. My fiancée seems to wish it."
    "Your fiancée?"
    "I am engaged to Agnes Flack."
    I was astounded. I had always understood that Agnes Flack was betrothed to Sidney McMurdo. I was also more than a little shocked. It was only a few weeks since he had poured out his soul to me on the subject of Troon Rockett, and this abrupt switching of his affections to another seemed to argue a sad lack of character and stability. When young fellows are enamoured of a member of the other sex, I like them to stay enamoured.
    "Well, I hope you will be very happy," I said.
    "You needn't try to be funny," he rejoined bitterly.
    There was a sombre light in his eyes, and he foozled another putt.
    "The whole thing," he said, "is due to one of those unfortunate misunderstandings. When they made me scratch, my first move was to thank Miss Flack warmly for all she had done for me."
    "Naturally."
    "I let myself go
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