“You see,” said Jimmie to me as he lay magnificently on the grass waiting to grow cool while Cecelia still fanned him with the towel, “you see it don’t hurt her to pace me round the track.”

“Apparently not,” said I, and although he’s my own boy and I know him pretty well, I couldn’t for the life of me decide whether he, as well as Cecelia Anne, had really failed to grasp the fact that she beats him to a standstill every morning.  I suppose we’ll know on the Fourth.  If she runs, then he does not know.  But if he refuses to let her run; it will be because he does know.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Mrs. Hawtry.

* * * * *

Cecelia Anne was allowed to run.  First, in a girl’s race among the giggling, amateurish, self-conscious girls whom she outdistanced by a lap or two and, later, in the race for all winners, where she had to compete with Charlie Anderson, the beau of the hotel, Len Fogarty, the milkman’s son, and her own incomparable Jimmie.

The master of ceremonies gave the signal and the event of the day was on.  First to collapse was Charlie Anderson.  Jimmie was then in the lead with Len Fogarty a close second, and Cecelia Anne beside him.  So they went for a lap.  Then Jimmie, missing perhaps the blue little figure of his pacemaker, wavered a little, only a little, but enough to allow Len Fogarty to forge past him.  Len Fogarty!  The blatant, hated Len Fogarty, always shouting defiance from his father’s milk-wagon!  Then forward sprang Cecelia Anne.  Not for all the riches of the earth would she have beaten Jimmie, but not for all the glory of heaven would she allow any one else to beat him.  And so by an easy spectacular ten seconds, she outran Len Fogarty.

Then wild was the enthusiasm of the audience and black was the brow of Len Fogarty.  A chorus of:  “Let a girl lick you,” “Call yourself a runner,” “Come up to the house an’ race me baby brother,” has not a soothing effect when added to the disappointment of being forever shut off from the business end of rockets and Roman candles.  These things Cecelia Anne knew and so accepted, sadly and resignedly, the glare with which Len turned away from her little attempts at explanations.

But she was not prepared, nothing in her short life could ever have prepared her, to find the same expression on Jimmie’s face when she broke through a shower of congratulations and followed him up the road; to expect praise and to meet such a rebuff would have been sufficient to make even stiffer laurels than Cecelia Anne’s trail in the dust.

“Why Jimmie,” she whimpered contrary to his most stringent rule.  “Why Jimmie what’s the matter?”

“You’re a sneak,” said Jimmie darkly and vouchsafed no more.  There was indeed no more to say.  It was the last word of opprobrium.

They pattered on in silence for a short but dusty distance, Cecelia Anne struggling with the temptation to lie down and die; Jimmie upborne by furious temper.