“There is an ox in my garden,” she announced, in explanation of the tempestuous intrusion.

“An ox,” said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; “what kind of ox?”

“Oh, I don’t know what kind,” snapped the lady.  “A common or garden ox, to use the slang expression.  It is the garden part of it that I object to.  My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox roaming about in it won’t improve matters.  Besides, there are the chrysanthemums just coming into flower.”

“How did it get into the garden?” asked Eshley.

“I imagine it came in by the gate,” said the lady impatiently; “it couldn’t have climbed the walls, and I don’t suppose anyone dropped it from an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement.  The immediately important question is not how it got in, but how to get it out.”

“Won’t it go?” said Eshley.

“If it was anxious to go,” said Adela Pingsford rather angrily, “I should not have come here to chat with you about it.  I’m practically all alone; the housemaid is having her afternoon out and the cook is lying down with an attack of neuralgia.  Anything that I may have learned at school or in after life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems to have escaped from my memory now.  All I could think of was that you were a near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slight assistance.  Possibly I was mistaken.”

“I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley, “but I cannot claim to have had any experience in rounding-up stray oxen.  I’ve seen it done on a cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures are faked.”

Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her garden.  It was normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked small in comparison with the ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red about the head and shoulders, passing to dirty white on the flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and large blood-shot eyes.  It bore about as much resemblance to the dainty paddock heifers that Eshley was accustomed to paint as the chief of a Kurdish nomad clan would to a Japanese tea-shop girl.  Eshley stood very near the gate while he studied the animal’s appearance and demeanour.  Adela Pingsford continued to say nothing.

“It’s eating a chrysanthemum,” said Eshley at last, when the silence had become unbearable.

“How observant you are,” said Adela bitterly.  “You seem to notice everything.  As a matter of fact, it has got six chrysanthemums in its mouth at the present moment.”

The necessity for doing something was becoming imperative.  Eshley took a step or two in the direction of the animal, clapped his hands, and made noises of the “Hish” and “Shoo” variety.  If the ox heard them it gave no outward indication of the fact.