“Oh, what a pedigree!” cried Miranda.  “She must win.”

Jupp wrinkled his forehead.

“But she’s done nothing.  Why must she win?” asked Dennis.

Miranda shrugged her shoulders at the ineffable stupidity of the young man with whom she was linked.

“Listen to her name!  Jemima Puddleduck!  She can’t lose!”

Both the young men dropped their books and gazed at one another hopelessly.  Here was the whole scientific business of spotting winners, through research into pedigrees, weights, records, the favourite distances and race courses of this or that runner, so completely disregarded that racing might really be a matter of chance.

“I’ll tell you, Miranda,” said Harold Jupp.  “Jemima Puddleduck’s a Plater.”

The awful condemnation had no sooner been pronounced than the butler, with his attendant footman, appeared to remove the tea.

“We have just heard over the telephone, sir,” he said to Sir Chichester, “the winner of the last race.”

“Oh!” cried Miranda breathlessly.  “Which was it?”

“Chewing Gum.”

Miranda swept round to her husband, radiant.  “There, what did I tell you?  Chewing Gum.  What were the odds, Harper?” She turned again to the butler.  “Oh, you do know, don’t you?”

“Yes, madam, twelve to one.  They say he rolled home.”

Miranda Brown jumped in the air.

“Oh, I have won a hundred and twenty pounds.”

Harold Jupp was sympathetic and consolatory.

“Of course it’s a mistake, Miranda.  I am awfully sorry!  Chewing Gum ran nowhere to Earthly Paradise in the Newberry Stakes this year, and Earthly Paradise, all out to win, was beaten a month ago by seven lengths at Warwick, by Rollicking Lady.  And Rollicking Lady was in this race too.  So you see it’s impossible.  Chewing Gum’s a Plater.”

Miranda wrung her hands.

“But, Harold, he did win; didn’t he, Harper?”

“There’s no doubt about it, madam,” replied the butler with dignity.  “I ’av verified the hinformation from other sources.”

He left the two experts blinking.  Dennis was the first to recover from the blow.

“What on earth made you back him, Miranda?”

Miranda sailed to the side of Joan Whitworth.

“You are both of you so very unpleasant that I am seriously inclined not to tell you.  But I always back horses with the names of things to eat.”

The two scientists were dumb.  They stared open-mouthed.  Somewhere, it seemed, a religion tottered upon its foundations.  Sacrilege itself could hardly have gone further than Miranda Brown had gone.

“But—­but,” Harold Jupp stammered feebly, “you don’t eat chewing gum.”

Miranda flattened him out with a question.

“What becomes of it, then?” and there was no answer.  But Miranda was not content with her triumph.  She must needs carry the war unwisely into the enemy’s camp.