The stars in their courses now began to fight for Pip. His ball from the next tee, badly topped, ran merrily into a bunker, hopped out, and lay on fair turf five yards beyond. Upset, perhaps, by this fluke, Elsie for the first time bungled her tee-shot, sliced her second into a bad lie, and arrived at the green to find that Pip, who had been playing a kind of glorified croquet-match against an invisible opponent, with his iron for a mallet and whin-bushes for hoops, was still a stroke to the good. She lost the hole.
Pip was now two up, with seven to play. But Elsie's cup was not yet full. Her next drive was caught most unfairly in an aggressively fresh rabbit-scrape, which lay right in the fairway to the hole. Pip offered to allow her to lift it, but she declined. Pip's good luck also con
