track on Third Avenue. The voice of the people, he says, has died away to a faint murmuring. Some day I think I will tell Barney the truth. He does not play golf, but he has a sense of humour.

LITTLE POISON IVY

I

The leopard cannot change his spots—possibly he wouldn't if he could; and, this being the case, the next best thing is to overlook as many of his freckles as possible.

Yesterday I sat on the porch at the Country Club and listened while the Dingbats said kind and complimentary things about young Ambrose Phipps, alias Little Poison Ivy, alias The Pest, alias Rough and Reddy. One short week ago the Dingbats would have voted him a nuisance and a menace to society in general. Yesterday they praised him to the skies. It just goes to show that good can be found in anybody—if that is what you are looking for.

Understand me: there has been no change in Ambrose. He is still as fresh as a mountain breeze. Unquestionably he will continue to treat his elders with a shocking lack of respect and an entire absence of consideration. He was born with a deep depression where his bump of reverence should have been located, and neither realises nor regrets his deficiency.

He will never change. It is the Dingbats who have changed. The whole club has changed, so far as Ambrose is concerned.

We are all trying to overlook the dark spots in his character and see good in him, whether it is there or not.

Now as to the Dingbats: if you do not know them you have missed something rich and rare in the golfing line. There are four of them, all retired capitalists on the shady side of sixty. They freely admit that they are the worst golfers in the world, and in a pinch they could prove it. They play together six days a week—a riotous, garrulous, hilarious foursome, ripping the course wide open from the first tee to the home green; and they get more real fun out of golf than any men I know. They never worry about being off their game, because they have never been on it; they know they can be no worse than they are and they have no hope of ever being better; they expect to play badly, and it is seldom that they are disappointed. Whenever a Dingbat forgets to count his shots in the bunkers, and comes home in the nineties, a public celebration takes place on the clubhouse porch.

Yesterday it was Doc Pinkinson who brought in the ninety-eight—and signed all the tags; and between libations they talked about Ambrose Phipps, who was practising brassy shots off the grass beside the eighteenth green.

Little Poison Ivy was unusually cocky, even for him, and every move was a picture. At the end of his follow-through he would freeze, nicely balanced on the tip of his right toe, elbows artistically elevated, clubhead up round his neck; and not a muscle would he move until the ball stopped rolling. He might have been posing for a statue of the Perfect Golfer. When he walked it was with a conscious little swagger and a flirting of the short tails of his belted sport coat. He was hitting them clean, he was hitting them far, he had an audience—and well he knew it. Ambrose was in his glory yesterday afternoon!

"By golly!" exclaimed Doc Pinkinson. "Ain't that a pretty sight? Ain't it a treat to see that kid lambaste the ball?"

"Certainly is," agreed Old Treanor with a sigh. "Perfect form—that's what he's got."

"And confidence in himself," put in Old Myles. "That's the big secret. You can see it in every move he makes. Confidence is a wonderful thing!"

"And youth," said Daddy Bradshaw. "That's the most wonderful thing of all. It's his youth that makes him so—so flip. Got a lot to say, for a kid; but—somehow I always liked him for it."

"Me too!" chimed in Doc Pinkinson. "Doggone his skin! He used to make me awful mad, that boy.... Oh, well, I reckon I'm kind of cranky, anyway.... Yes; I always liked Ambrose."

Now that was all rot, and I knew it. What's more, the Dingbats knew it too. They hadn't always liked Ambrose. A week ago they would have marked his swaggering gait, the tilt of his chin, the conscious manner in which he posed after every shot; and they would have said Ambrose was showing off for the benefit of the female tea party at the other end of the porch—and they wouldn't have made any mistake, at that.

No; they hadn't always liked young Mr. Phipps. Nobody had liked him. To be perfectly frank about it, we had disliked him openly and cordially, and had been at no pains to keep him from finding it out. We had snubbed him, insulted him and ignored him on every possible occasion. Worst of all, we had made a singleton of him. We had forced him to play alone, because there wasn't a man in all the club who wanted him as a partner or as an opponent. There is no meaner treatment than this; nor is there anything more pathetically lonely than a singleton on a crowded golf course. It is nothing more or less than a grown-up trip to Coventry. I thought of all these things as I listened to the prattling of the Dingbats.

"Guess he won't have any trouble getting games now, hey?" chuckled Old Treanor.

"Huh!" grunted Doc Pinkinson. "He's dated up a week ahead—with Moreman and that bunch! A week ahead!"

"And he'll make 'em step!" chirped Daddy Bradshaw. "Here's to him, boys—a redhead and a fighter! Drink her down!"

"A redhead and a fighter!" chorused the Dingbats, lifting their glasses.

Yes; they drank to Ambrose Phipps, and one short week ago they wouldn't have tolerated him on the same side of the course with them. Our pet leopard still has his spots, but we are now viewing him in the friendly shade cast by a battered old silver cup: namely and to wit, the Edward B. Wimpus Team Trophy, permanently at home on the mantelpiece in the lounging room.

II

Going back to the beginning, we never had a chance to blame Ambrose on the Membership Committee; he slipped in on us via the junior-member clause. Old Man Phipps does not play golf; but he is a charter member of the club and, according to the by-laws, the sons of members between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one enjoy all the privileges of the institution.

Ambrose was nineteen when he returned rather hurriedly from college. He did this at the earnest and unanimous request of the Faculty and, it was whispered, the police department of the university town. He hadn't done much of anything, but he had tried very hard to drive a touring car and seven chorus girls through a plate-glass window into a restaurant. The press agent of the show saw his chance to get some publicity for the broilers, and after an interview with the Faculty Ambrose caught the first train for home.

Having nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, Ambrose decided to become a golfer. Old Dunn'l MacQuarrie, our professional, sold him a large leather bag full of tools and gave him two lessons. Thus equipped and fortified, young Mr. Phipps essayed to brighten our drab lives by allowing us to play golf with him. Now this sort of thing may be done in some clubs, but not in ours. We do not permit our sacred institutions to be "rushed" by the golfing novice. We are not snobbish, but we plead guilty to being the least bit set in our ways. They are good ways, and they suit us. The club is an old one, as golf clubs go in this country, and most of the playing members are men past forty years of age. Nearly all of the foursomes are permanent affairs, the same men playing together week after week, season in and season out. The other matches are made in advance, by telephone or word of mouth, and the member who turns up minus a game on Saturday afternoon is out of luck.

We do not leap at the stranger with open arms. We do not leap at him at all. We stand off and look him over. We put him on probation; and if he shapes up well, and walks lightly, and talks softly, and does not try to dynamite his way into matches where he is not wanted, some day he will be invited