But Patricia quickly snatched it from his hand. Her little drama had worked out far more beautifully than she had ever hoped it would, and she didn't propose to have it ruined now. "Nothing of the sort," she cried. "You may do whatever you like with your own skin, but that is a perfectly good French parasol, and it's mine." And she put it behind her back. Meanwhile the Sphynx was pelting the brute below him with apples and shouting anathema, both of which rolled from the animal's impervious back, as he circled angrily around the tree, up which he showed every disposition to climb. From tragic-comedy the scene had degenerated into broadest farce. "It's like Sothern playing a part of Georgie Cohan's," commented Patricia, sweetly. "Is he apt to be there all day?" "It looks so," said Aurora, struggling between anxiety and laughter. "We really ought to do something." But Patricia had settled herself comfortably on the top rail of the fence. Things were going very much to her liking. "What?" she asked. "Tell somebody. There's a wagon coming this way now." "But how about the Cross-Country Cup?" looking at her watch. "There's only an hour and a half to finish in." "But we can't leave him up there," said Steve, more seriously. "That bull will be there until--until the cows come home." "Jimmy is perfectly safe," said Patricia, "unless he goes to sleep and falls out; and he can't starve unless he throws all the apples at the bull." "Patty, you're heartless," said Aurora, but she laughed when she said it. The farmer who came along in the wagon took in the situation at a glance and laughing more loudly than any of them, consented at last to drive to the barnyard and tell the farmer. "It won't do any good," he said, sagely. "That bull won't go back until he follows the cows at milking time. He might quit before that--I dunno. I'll do what I can though." And with a laconic chirrup to his nag, he departed in the direction of the Van Westervelts' farmyard. The party of three followed him with their eyes until he had disappeared in a cloud of dust and then examined the apple-tree from which the Sphynx's legs dangled hopelessly. The rest of him was hidden among the leaves. "Until the cows come home," said Patricia, solemnly, and looking into one another's eyes all three of them burst into shameless laughter. And with that laugh free-masonry was established. It was plainly to be read in Aurora's eyes. The toppling of Jimmy's dignity had been too much for her own sense of gravity. Patricia meanwhile had taken out her watch. "This, my dear children," she said, indicating with a fine gesture, the Sphynx's apple-tree, "is one of the hazards of the New Game of Golf. There is only an hour and a half to finish in. Play the game, you two, I must wait." "It wouldn't be the sporting thing," said Steve, struggling with a desire to obey. "I'd like to know who is as good a judge of the rules of a game as its inventor," said Patricia. "Am I right, Aurora?"