wo to play.

And it was on the seventeenth tee that I had to think seriously how I
wanted the match to end. Thomson at lunch when he has won is a very
different man from Thomson at lunch when he has lost. The more I thought
about it, the more I realized that I was in rather a happy position. If
I won, I won--which was jolly; if I lost, Thomson won--and we should
have a pleasant lunch.

However, as it happened, the match was halved.

"Yes, I was afraid so," said Thomson; "I let you get too long a start.
It's absurd to suppose that I can give you four holes up and beat you.
It practically amounts to giving you four bisques. Four bisques is about
six strokes--I'm not really six strokes better than you."

"What about lunch?" I suggested.

"Good; and you can have your revenge afterwards." He led the way into
the pavilion. "Now I wonder," he said, "what I can safely eat. I want
to be able to give you _some_ sort of a game this afternoon."

Well, if there is ever a Royal Commission upon the national physique I
shall insist on giving evidence. For it seems to me that golf, far from
improving the health of the country, is actually undermining it.
Thomson, at any rate, since he has taken to the game, has never been
quite fit.

IN THE SWIM

"Do you tango?" asked Miss Hopkins, as soon as we were comfortably
seated. I know her name was Hopkins, because I had her down on my
programme as Popkins, which seemed too good to be true; and, in order to
give her a chance of reconsidering it, I had asked her if she was one of
the Popkinses of Hampshire. It had then turned out that she was really
one of the Hopkinses of Maida Vale.

"No," I said, "I don't." She was only the fifth person who had asked me,
but then she was only my fifth partner.

"Oh, you ought to. You must be up-to-date, you know."

"I'm always a bit late with these things," I explained. "The waltz came
to England in 1812, but I didn't really master it till 1904."

"I'm afraid if you wait as long as that before you master the tango it
will be out."

"That's what I thought. By the time I learnt the tango, the bingo would
be in. My idea was to learn the bingo in advance, so as to be ready for
it. Think how you'll all envy me in 1917. Think how Society will flock
to my Bingo Quick Lunches. I shall be the only man in London who bingoes
properly. Of course, by 1918 you'll all be at it."

"Then we must have one together in 1918," smiled Miss Hopkins.

"In 1