one by one, the crowd crept gratefully
under shade trees, watching the ap
proaching thunder storm as limply as
they watched the finish of the tourna
ment.
Burgess Lang teed up, crouched a mo
ment, figuring the lie. Mike stood back,
aloofly silent. This was the test. This
flung things whichever way they must
go. Burgess grasped his iron, his short,
thick fingers closing around the handle
in the grip old Jock McWha had taught
him so long age in Scotland. The club
swept up, came down in a sure, sweet
arc and connected witji the The
handful of gallery sighed. That settled
it. Even Mike Hess, even the thrice
champion of champions could not touch
that!
Mike squared off. He did no figuring.
He took no time out to estimate dis
tance or figure timing. He debated no
instant over balls or club. He simply
reached into the bag, picked up a club,
dropped the ball to the ground and
stepped back.
rpEN seconds later the ball rolled to a
slowing arc, up to the pin, paused dra
matically at the edge and rolled in. The
echoing roar of acclaim from the gallery
was smothered in a splitting crash of
thunder and drops as big as quarters
began spattering. The tournament was
over and 'Mike had won —won and lost.
Won the game, but lost the girl of his
heart by besting her father.
The last photographer was gone and
the last reporter. Rain flirted against
the windowpanes in the snug little cot
tage, and thunder muttered a disgrunted
departure over a far-distant Berkshire
crag. The tournament was over and
Summer was ended. Mike yanked out
his luggage kit and began throwing
things into it. Victory had turned to
salt and ashes in his mouth. Salt of
regret and ashes of despair.
The door banged open and a rain
coated figure tugged at a huge sou’-
wester. Connie stood dripping on the
best red rug the club’ board had ever
given the pro’s living room.
“Mike,” she said in a still, small voice,
"I came to . . th-thank you. It was
swell of you.”
“It was nothing,” Mike said gruffly,
his fingers twisting and rolling a freshly
laundered white shirt to the consistency
of a floor mop, “glad to do it for you,
Connie.”
She was having difficulty with ths
clips fastening her raincoat, and he
stepped forward to assist. The faint
drift of perfume from her hair was tor
ment, and he resisted the impulse to
wipe away the raindrops Jeweling her
with savjffce determination.
Not that not again. He'd fallen by that
Illustrated by
Henrietta McCaig Starrett - JANET DORAN
nft Bill-,:'
PRO AND CONNIE -
Mike Knew a Lot
About Golf, and
He Learned
Later About
Love
i
A PRO, Connie told Mike that jeweled
June morning, never makes any
money. “He wouldn't be teaching if he
had the stuff tournament timber is made
of!” she declared emphatically.
Mike Hess stared at her intently, and
it was only the dewy freshness of her
apricot skin, the drenched pansy-beauty
of her brown eyes that kept him from
tying his No. 4 iron neatly around
her neck, and finishing it off with a
bowknot. It never failed to do this to
him —Connie’s fresh, blythe verbal shots
t’ at cleaved swiftly past his careful
guard and landed raw on bruised quiv
ering sore wounds. It never failed to fill
him with a mute sort of wonder that he
could take so much and pay off so little.
No other woman had ever troubled
Mike Hess. Not even in his palmier
tournament days when debutantes
trouped after him, lilting their ecstatic
praises, and doting dowagers trailed
along in his wake, subtly withholding
their marriageable females until such
time as he might be thoroughly razzle
dazzled. But from the first, Connie Lang
got in his hair.
HE TOLD himself first that he hated
small women. And Connie was
barely 5 feet 4! He assured his inner
mind that red-headed wimmin were all
right for the ice man, for cops and truck
drivers, but he wouldn’t have any of
that kind of potatoes, thank you. The
sand in spinach was much more. easily
digested.
As for girls who played golf in brown
check linen shorts and a halter, and
tennis in a romper suit that was a
mere wisp of pink linen or so—well, he
had h ! own idea of them, and it was
plenty, oh most assuredly— and defi
nitely —sufficient. It didn’t help mat
ters any that she weighed barely 110
pounds, and that a figure like hers was
a crime concealed, and a delight the
further you adorned it with Natures
A n ‘sunshine.
umph. In fact, looking wan, tired and
drawn, but staying in there.
Then Mrs. Cramer had a stroke and
Mike knew it was all over. Howard
came out in a frantic rush toward the
end of the fourth and next to final day
of the tournament, -and Connie stopped
playing and stepped back.
“I’ve no substitute, Howard,” she said
flatly, “I'll have to default."
Mike stepped forward.
“I’ll substitute you, Connie,” he
offered quietly. There wa#a resentful
murmur from Hie gallery, standing
that first breathless instant of as
tonishment. Desperately he tried to
think of something to say, and no words
came. Instead he pulled her back into
his embrace again and was very still,
very quiet, mute and humble, and a
bewildered and frightened as the
full import of his dis»>very crashed
across his senses.
Slip lOVPfI him —rnnnipl Thou hod
"Listen, Connie,” Mike exploded. He wanted to choke her. He wanted
more, to kiss her. To grab her and shake some of that cool, infuriatingly
calm serenity out of her
“Shall I wear it only after 10 o’clock.
Mike?” she challenged.
“Why wear it at all?” Mike said
gruffly. “Leaves you naked as a nudist
camper, almost!”
"If I can wear it for you I can weat
it for others,” Connie informed him
sweetly, and Mike no* guess that
she hall learned something her heart
dad been asking all Summer —ever
where the course rounds out to skirt the
brook in a lazy flirting swirl, Connie was
locked tight with her first major casu
alty. She was in a sand trap and at
the same time in a gorgeous fit of high
sounding, explosive temperament that
was something to watch, even if it wasn’t
anything you could listen to safely.
Mike whistled down hurricanes, to
say nothing of tornadoes. He stepped
down into the pit and calmly surveyed
die small girl whose sun-tanned face
was a dark, flushed angry tint, and
whose brown eyes ®verj| snapping blue