“How about time?” said Geoffrey.

Perry consulted an elaborate watch, constructed to mark time to the fifth of a second, and answered Geoffrey, with his eye all the while on Mrs. Glenarm.

“You’ve got five minutes to spare.”

“Show me where you run, I’m dying to see it!” said the eager widow, taking possession of Geoffrey’s arm with both hands.

Geoffrey led her back to a place (marked by a sapling with a little flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage.  She glided along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared to complete the exasperation of Perry.  He waited until she was out of hearing—­and then he invoked (let us say) the blasts of heaven on the fashionably-dressed head of Mrs. Glenarm.

“You take your place there,” said Geoffrey, posting her by the sapling.  “When I pass you—­” He stopped, and surveyed her with a good-humored masculine pity.  “How the devil am I to make you understand it?” he went on.  “Look here! when I pass you, it will be at what you would call (if I was a horse) full gallop.  Hold your tongue—­I haven’t done yet.  You’re to look on after me as I leave you, to where the edge of the cottage wall cuts the trees.  When you have lost sight of me behind the wall, you’ll have seen me run my three hundred yards from this flag.  You’re in luck’s way!  Perry tries me at the long Sprint to-day.  You understand you’re to stop here?  Very well then—­let me go and get my toggery on.”

“Sha’n’t I see you again, Geoffrey?”

“Haven’t I just told you that you’ll see me run?”

“Yes—­but after that?”

“After that, I’m sponged and rubbed down—­and rest in the cottage.”

“You’ll come to us this evening?”

He nodded, and left her.  The face of Perry looked unutterable things when he and Geoffrey met at the door of the cottage.

“I’ve got a question to ask you, Mr. Delamayn,” said the trainer.  “Do you want me? or don’t you?”

“Of course I want you.”

“What did I say when I first come here?” proceeded Perry, sternly.  “I said, ’I won’t have nobody a looking on at a man I’m training.  These here ladies and gentlemen may all have made up their minds to see you.  I’ve made up my mind not to have no lookers-on.  I won’t have you timed at your work by nobody but me.  I won’t have every blessed yard of ground you cover put in the noospapers.  I won’t have a living soul in the secret of what you can do, and what you can’t, except our two selves.’—­Did I say that, Mr. Delamayn? or didn’t I?”

“All right!”

“Did I say it? or didn’t I?”

“Of course you did!”

“Then don’t you bring no more women here.  It’s clean against rules.  And I won’t have it.”

Any other living creature adopting this tone of remonstrance would probably have had reason to repent it.  But Geoffrey himself was afraid to show his temper in the presence of Perry.  In view of the coming race, the first and foremost of British trainers was not to be trifled with, even by the first and foremost of British athletes.