Miranda’s face cleared of all its troubles.

“Oh, why didn’t I think of that before?” she said in an extremity of self-reproach.  She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.

“Callow Girl is nine to one, isn’t it?”

The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.

“To you, missie.”

Miranda laughed.

“I’ll have ten pounds on it,” she said, and did not hear the gasp of her husband behind her.  She made a note of the bet in her little pocket-book.

“That’s ninety pounds, anyway,” she said, turning to her companions.  “They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the embroidery.”

Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown.  She wanted a simple little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was obviously marked out to win it for her.

“Then I shall be a Callot girl,” she said gaily, and as neither of her companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.

“Oh, how dull you both are!” she cried.

“Well, you see,” Dennis rejoined, “we’ve had rather a bad day.”

“So have I,” returned Miranda indignantly.  “Yet I keep up my spirits.”

A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown.  He gazed around as one who should say, “Did you ever see anything so amazing outside the Ark?”

Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.

“Well, I mean I haven’t won as much as I should have if I had backed winners.”  For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.  She knew how to go racing.  Her husband paid her losses and she kept her winnings.

Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.

“You ought to go into a home, Miranda,” he advised.  “You really ought.  That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought.”

Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the course.

“Don’t be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you can find him, whilst I see my filly win,” she said.  “Dennis has already gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is over.”

Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards the starting post.  From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds on Callow Girl had shortened.  It was understood that a sum of money had been laid on her at the last moment.  She was favourite before the flag was dropped and won by half a length.  Miranda ran joyously down the slope.

“What did I tell you, Harold?  Aren’t I wonderful?  And have you found Colonel Luttrell?  You know Millie told us to look out for him?” she cried all in a breath.

Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.