l a duffer. All I'd accumulated were palm callouses and a backache.
Yet I knew just how it should be done. I can repeat it now. One--you
take your 'stance. Two--you start the head of the club back in a
straight line with the left wrist. Three--you come up on your left toe
and bend the right knee. And so on. Yet I'd dub the ball only a few
yards.

"Then, when that was over, I'd go in and change for my dancing lessons.
More one--two--three stuff. And say, some of these new jazz steps are
queer, aren't they? I'd about got three or four all mixed up in my head
when I'd have to run and jump into my riding habit and go through a
different lot of one--two--three motions. And just as I'd lamed myself
in a lot of new places there would come the swimming lesson. I thought I
could swim some, too. I learned one summer down at Far Rockaway. But it
seems that was old stuff. They aren't doing that now. No, it's the
double side stroke, the Australian crawl, and a lot more. One, two,
three, four, five, six. Legs straight, chin down, and roll on the
three. And if you dream it's a pleasure to have a big husk of an
instructor pump your arms back and forth for an hour, and say sarcastic
things to you when you get mixed, with a whole gallery of fat old women
and grinning old sports looking on--Well, I'm tellin' you it's fierce.
Ab-so-lutely. It was the swimming lesson that finished me. Especially
the counting. 'Why, Lucy Snell, you poor prune,' says I to myself,
'you're not having a good time. You're back in school, second grade, and
the dunce of the class.' That's what I was, too. A flat failure. And
when I got to thinking of how Babe would take it when he found
out--Well, it got on my nerves so that I simply made a run for home.
There! You can tell him all about it, and I suppose he'll never want to
see or hear of me again."

"Maybe," says I, "but I have my doubts. Anyway, it won't take long to
make a test."

And when I'd left her and strolled out to the gate where Babe is pacin'
up and down anxious, he demands at once: "Well, did you find out?"

"Uh-huh," says I.

"Was--was it something I did?" he asks trembly.

"Sure it was," says I. "You let her in for an intensive training act
that would make the Paris Island marine school grind look like a wand
drill. You should have had better sense, too. Why, what she was trying
to sop up in six weeks most young ladies give as many years to. Near as
I can judge she was making a game play of i