The race went by, and a stranger race Tilda had never beheld.  The competitors were all women, of all ages—­village girls, buxom matrons, withered crones—­and each woman held a ladle before her in which an egg lay balanced.  Some were in sun-bonnets, others in their best Sunday headdress.  Some had kilted their skirts high.  Others were all dishevelled with the ardour of the race.  The leader—­a gaunt figure with spoon held rigidly before her, with white stockinged legs, and a truly magnificent stride—­had come and passed before Tilda could believe her eyes.  After a long interval three others tottered by in a cluster.  The fifth dropped her egg and collapsed beside it, to be hauled to her feet and revived by the stewards amid inextinguishable laughter from the crowd.  In all, fourteen competitors rolled in, some with empty ladles, some laughing and protesting that not a step farther could they stir.  But, long before the crowd closed in, Tilda saw the winner breast a glimmering line of tape stretched at the end of the course, and heard the shouts saluting her victory.

“But who is it?”

“Miss Sally!”

“Miss Sally, if ever you heard the like! . . .  But there! blood will tell.”

“It’s years since I seen her,” said a woman.

“You don’t say!  Never feared man nor devil, my mother used to tell.  An’ to run in a race along with the likes of Jane Pratt!  But you never can reckon wi’ the gentry—­what they’ll do, or what they won’t.”

“With half the county, too, lookin’ on from the Grand Stand!  I bet Sir Elphinstone’s cussin’.”

“And I’ll bet Miss Sally don’t care how hard he cusses.  She could do a bit o’ that too in her time, by all accounts.”

“Ay, a monstrous free-spoken lady always.  Swearin’ don’t sit well upon womankind, I allow—­not as a rule.  But when there’s blood, a damn up or down—­what is it?  For my part I never knew a real gentleman—­or lady for that matter—­let out a downright thumper but I want to cry ‘Old England for ever!’”

Finding it hopeless to skirt the crowd, the children made a plunge through it, with ’Dolph at their heels.  But as the crush abated and they breasted the farther slope, Tilda made two discoveries; the first, that whereas a few minutes since the platform had held a company of people among its palms and fairy-lamps, it was now deserted; the second, that the mob at the winning-post had actually shouldered Miss Sally, and was carrying her in triumph towards the platform, with a brass band bobbing ahead and blaring See, the Conquering Hero comes!

This second discovery was serious, for the procession’s line of march threatened to intercept them.  But luckily the bandsmen, who set the pace, moved slowly, and by taking hands and running the children reached the platform in time, skirted its darker side, and dived under its scarlet draperies into the cavernous darkness beneath the boards.