It took Steve Ventnor thirteen strokes to play out of that quarry, which, for a fellow with a record of seventy-two at Apawomeck, was “going it.” The first stroke he missed clean; the second he sliced into a clay-bank; his third struck the rocks and bounded back against the wall behind him, finding lodgment at last in some bushes where he took three more. To make matters worse, Aurora was laughing at him, hysterically, unrestrainedly, and Patricia and the Sphynx, who had appeared on the path above, were joining in the merriment.
“Oh, I’ll lift,” he growled at last.
“You can’t,” laughed Aurora. “It’s against the rules.” And Patricia appealed to, confirmed the statement.
Three more swings he took, each of them in impossible lies, the last of which smashed his niblick. After that there followed a period of strange calmness—of desperation, while he worked his ball into a good lie on the far side of the quarry from which, with a fine mashie shot he lifted it over the cliffs and into the open beyond.
Steve Ventnor toiled wearily up the hill at the heels of his caddy, struggling for his lost composure. He caught up with Aurora at a point half-way up where he took the golf bag from her shoulder and faced her again.
“Won’t you answer me, Aurora?” he pleaded, breathlessly.
“No, I won’t,” she said, calmly. “You swore—horribly—in the bushes.”
“I didn’t.”
“I heard you,” firmly. “I’ll never marry a man who swears,” and she hurried on. When Ventnor joined the others, he found Patricia sitting on a rock making up the score, which at the present moment stood: Ventnor—20; McLemore—9.