Very good, Miss," he cried cheerfully, touched his hat, and
began to run as on an errand.

It was a pretty piece of bluff. Boy Woodburn, in spite of her anger,
marked it down to the credit side of the lad's account. When he was
collared, Albert Edward kept his head. That would help him one day when
he was caught in a squeeze in a big race and had to jockey to get
through.

The roar from the crowd told her the race had started. She flashed back
to the ropes, a slight figure, in simple blue serge, the radiant plait
of her hair flapping as she ran.

Old Mat, standing a little behind the crowd at the ropes, had watched
the scene.

"One o' my lads," he said in his mysterious wheeze to the big young man
at his side. "'No smokin', swearin', or bettin' in _my_ stable!'--that's
Miss Boy's rule. Gets it from Mar." The girl passed them swiftly and the
old man hid his betting-book behind him. "Well, Boy, sossed him?" he
asked innocently.

"He's not the only one," retorted the girl.

"O, I'm not bettin', Boy," pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine
which he adopted when addressing his daughter. "Don't go and tell your
mother that now. It wouldn't be right. Reelly it wouldn't. I'm only
makin' a note or two for Mr. Silver here."

The girl was lost in the crowd by the ropes.

"She'd ha' come and sossed me, too, only you was with me," wheezed the
old man confidentially. "You stick close to me, there's a dear. You're
like a putection to an old man. She won't do me no 'arm while you're by,
de we."

The other smiled. He was an upstanding young man, with the shoulders and
the bearing of a soldier; and there was something large and slow and
elemental about him. He wore white riding-breeches and tan-coloured
boots. The blood polo-pony under the elms, with the little group of
coachmen and grooms gathered in an admiring circle round him, was his:
and those who had seen Mat drive on to the course in the morning knew
that the young man had ridden over the Downs from Putnam's with him.

Boy took her place at the ropes.

The young man found himself standing at her side. He did not watch the
race. That keen young face at his side, so self-contained and strong,
absorbed him.

Once the girl looked up swiftly, and he was aware of her gray eyes, that
flashed in his and were instantly withdrawn, to follow the bob of the
heads of the jockeys lifting over a fence on the far side of the course.

"Lul-like my glasses?" he asked, with a