that he began once more to entertain thoughts of marriage. A profound
statistician in this one department, he had discovered that practically
all the finest exponents of the art are married men; and the thought
that there might be something in the holy state which improved a man's
game, and that he was missing a good thing, troubled him a great deal.
Moreover, the paternal instinct had awakened in him. As he justly
pointed out, whether marriage improved your game or not, it was to Old
Tom Morris's marriage that the existence of young Tommy Morris, winner
of the British Open Championship four times in succession, could be
directly traced. In fact, at the age of forty-two, Mortimer Sturgis was
in just the frame of mind to take some nice girl aside and ask her to
become a step-mother to his eleven drivers, his baffy, his twenty-eight
putters, and the rest of the ninety-four clubs which he had accumulated
in the course of his golfing career. The sole stipulation, of course,
which he made when dreaming his daydreams was that the future Mrs.
Sturgis must be a golfer. I can still recall the horror in his face
when one girl, admirable in other respects, said that she had never
heard of Harry Vardon, and didn't he mean Dolly Vardon? She has since
proved an excellent wife and mother, but Mortimer Sturgis never spoke
to her again.

With the coming of January, it was Mortimer's practice to leave England
and go to the South of France, where there was sunshine and crisp dry
turf. He pursued his usual custom this year. With his suit-case and his
ninety-four clubs he went off to Saint Brule, staying as he always did
at the Hotel Superbe, where they knew him, and treated with an amiable
tolerance his habit of practising chip-shots in his bedroom. On the
first evening, after breaking a statuette of the Infant Samuel in
Prayer, he dressed and went down to dinner. And the first thing he saw
was Her.