“I’m asking sixty,” said Fanny dubiously.  “What would you take for her, Mr. Gunning—­on the last day, you know?”

“I’d take a ticket for her,” said Rupert Gunning, “back to Craffroe—­if you haven’t a return.”

The second and third days crawled by unmarked by any incident of cheer, but on the morning of the fourth, when Fanny arrived at the stall, she found that Patsey had already gone out to exercise.  She hurried to the ring and signalled to him to come to her.

“There’s a fella’ afther her, miss!” said Patsey, bending very low and whispering at close and tobacco-scented range.  “He came last night to buy her; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he said for me to be in the ring this morning.  He’s not come yet.  He had a straw hat on him.”

Fanny sat down under the trees and waited for the jockey in the straw hat.  All around were preoccupied knots of bargainers, of owners making their final arrangements, of would-be-buyers hurrying from ring to ring in search of the paragon that they had now so little time to find.  But the man from the Curragh came not.  Fanny sent the mare in, and sat on under the trees, sunk in depression.  It seemed to her she was the only person in the show who had nothing to do, who was not clinking handfuls of money, or smoothing out banknotes, or folding up cheques and interring them in fat and greasy pocket-books.  She had never known this aspect of the Horse Show before, and—­so much is in the point of view—­it seemed to her sordid and detestable.  Prize-winners with their coloured rosettes were swaggering about everywhere.  Every horse in the show seemed to have got a prize except hers, thought Fanny.  And not a man in a straw hat came near Ring 3.

She went home to lunch, dead tired.  The others were going to see the polo in the park.

“I must go back and sell the mare,” said Fanny valiantly, “or else take that ticket to Craffroe, Mr. Gunning!”

“Well, we’ll come down and pick you up there after the first match, you poor, miserable thing,” said Mrs. Spicer, “and I hope you’ll find that beast of a horse dead when you get there!  You look half dead yourself!”

How sick Fanny was of signing her name at that turnstile!  The pen was more atrocious every time.  How tired her feet were!  How sick she was of the whole thing, and how incredibly big a fool she had been!  She was almost too tired to know what she was doing, and she had actually walked past stall No. 548 without noticing it, when she heard Patsey’s voice calling her.

“Miss Fanny!  Miss Fanny!  I have her sold!  The mare’s sold, miss!  See here!  I have the money in me pocket!”

The colour flooded Fanny Fitz’s face.  She stared at Patsey with eyes that more than ever suggested the Connemara trout-stream with the sun playing in it; so bright were they, so changing, and so wet.  So at least thought a man, much addicted to fishing, who was regarding the scene from a little way off.