“How do you like it, Steve?” asked Patricia, still figuring.
“Oh, it’s great!” said Steve, ironically, holding up his shattered niblick. “I like granite, it’s so spongy.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got a bad temper, Steve.”
But Ventnor had taken out his pipe, lit it and was now doggedly moving toward his ball.
The luck favored him on his next volley, for playing two mid-irons down the hill, he reached the level meadow below safely, while McLemore sliced his second into a row of hot frames, where an indignant horticulturist and two dogs contributed an interesting mental hazard. But the Sphynx handed the farmer a dollar in exchange for lacerated feelings and glass, and the match went on. Over the brook McLemore lay thirteen, having “dubbed” his shot into the stream, but playing steadily after that reached the top of the long hill before them, safely in four more; while Ventnor lost his ball in the bushes and was now playing twenty-five.
CHAPTER XXI
From there on, the luck varied and at the Stockbridge farm the score stood McLemore, 21; Ventnor, 30. It seemed a difficult lead to overcome, for the Sphynx was playing straight with a mid-iron, while Steve, whose only hope lay in getting distance, had twice pulled into rough grass, which cost him lost balls and extra strokes. The wonder was how he played at all, for Aurora had refused to marry him three times in the last twenty minutes. The result was inevitable, and so like the man in the adage, after playing thirty-eight strokes, he “went up in the air,” missing shot after shot and relinquishing all claim to consideration, playing on only because fate seemed to demand it of him.
At the Van Westervelt’s fence both men got off “good ones,” landing well in the middle of the pasture and had gone forward into the field, their caddies close behind them, when from the shelter of a clump of trees along the stream to their left, there emerged a shadow. Aurora saw it first.