Page:Love among the chickens (1909).djvu/313

 aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played euchre with the heathen Chinee, I state but the facts. I do not, therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.

I felt ruthless toward the professor. I cannot plead ignorance of the golfer's point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to one whose soul is in the game, as the professor's was, the agony of being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all other agonies. I knew that if I scraped through by the smallest possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o' nights broken. He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only used his iron at the tenth hole all would have been well; that if he had aimed more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear and blank; that a more