ur dog? Bit of a philosopher, isn't he?"

Mrs. Wagge answered:

"Oh, he's a naughty dog, aren't you, Duckie?"

The dog Duckie, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye, rose and stood
panting into Gyp's face. She took the occasion to get up.

"We must go, I'm afraid. Good-bye. It's been very nice to meet you
again. When you see Daisy, will you please give her my love?"

Mrs. Wagge unexpectedly took a handkerchief from her reticule. Mr. Wagge
cleared his throat heavily. Gyp was conscious of the dog Duckie waddling
after them, and of Mrs. Wagge calling, "Duckie, Duckie!" from behind her
handkerchief.

Winton said softly:

"So those two got that pretty filly! Well, she didn't show much quality,
when you come to think of it. She's still with our friend, according to
your aunt."

Gyp nodded.

"Yes; and I do hope she's happy."

"HE isn't, apparently. Serves him right."

Gyp shook her head.

"Oh no, Dad!"

"Well, one oughtn't to wish any man worse than he's likely to get. But
when I see people daring to look down their noses at you--by Jove! I
get--"

"Darling, what does that matter?"

Winton answered testily:

"It matters very much to me--the impudence of it!" His mouth relaxed in
a grim little smile: "Ah, well--there's not much to choose between us so
far as condemning our neighbours goes. 'Charity Stakes--also ran, Charles
Clare Winton, the Church, and Mrs. Grundy.'"

They opened out to each other more in those few days at Tunbridge Wells
than they had for years. Whether the process of bathing softened his
crust, or the air that Mr. Wagge found "a bit--er--too irony, as you
might say," had upon Winton the opposite effect, he certainly relaxed
that first duty of man, the concealment of his spirit, and disclosed his
activities as he never had before--how such and such a person had been
set on his feet, so and so sent out to Canada, this man's wife helped
over her confinement, that man's daughter started again after a slip.
And Gyp's child-worship of him bloomed anew.

On the last afternoon of their stay, she strolled out with him through
one of the long woods that stretched away behind their hotel. Excited by
the coming end of her self-inflicted penance, moved by the beauty among
those sunlit trees, she found it difficult to talk. But Winton, about to
lose her, was quite loquacious. Starting from the sinister change in the
racing-world--so plutocratic now, with the American seat, the i