He gazed at us for a moment, a grave look on his rugged and honest face.  He dropped his cane, took our hands in his and said: 

“Children, you didn’t fool your old dad for one minute!  Take her, my boy, and God bless both of you!  Your mother knows it, Grace, and she sends her blessing.”

We almost overcame him with our expressions of gratitude.  As we started back to the hotel he glanced at us and chuckled.

“I suppose you two have not quit eating?” he suggested.

We promptly admitted we were hungry.

“And I presume you will play golf once in a while?”

We assured him that we certainly should.

“Well, suppose we go to the hotel, get a bite to eat and then go out and play that foursome with old Tom Morris and Carter,” he pleaded.  “There is one green out there which is called ‘The Garden of Eden,’ and I want to show it to you.  You, Grace, and mother and Mrs. Carter can go along and be the gallery.  I’ll promise not to say a word or give a hint about what has happened.”

Oh, that happy, happy afternoon on the turf, sand dunes, braes and greens of Old St. Andrews!  The sea gulls circled over our heads, the foam-flecked surf crooned its song of love, the River Eden wound about our pathway, and the blue sky smiled down upon us.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “there is one confession you have not made to me.”

“What is it, Jack?”

“Why did you play so wretchedly that first game in Woodvale?”

Old Tom Morris looked back and smiled in sympathy with her joyous laugh.

“They told me that you were a confirmed woman hater, and that nothing so exasperated you as to be compelled to play with a girl who was a novice.  I wished to see if it were true.  You are not a woman hater; are you, Jacques Henri?”

“No longer!” I declared.

“And you take back all the mean things you wrote about us in your diary?”

“Every word of it, Sweetheart!”

“Oh, Jack; I thought I should die of laughter when I drove those eight new balls in the pond.  And when you never said a cross word, and smiled and tried to encourage me, then I suspected that you loved me.”

“I wouldn’t have cared if you had driven me into the pond,” I said, and then I missed my fourth brassie.

Two weeks from that day there was a double wedding in the fine old drawing room of Marwick Mansion.  From the wedding feast which followed cablegrams went to our friends in Woodvale, also one to Mr. James Bishop, farmer near Woodvale, informing him that sometime next season all of us, including the “hired man,” would be with him for dinner and another dance in the new red barn.

We have been cruising in the Mediterranean, and now are anchored in the beautiful Bay of Naples.  Mr. Harding has been pacing the deck and gazing at the smoke-wreathed crest of Vesuvius.

[Illustration:  “I believe I can carry it”]