Boy refused to face him or to be convinced.

“I don’t,” she said.  “I don’t believe in class.  It’s the man that matters.”

“Hear, hear,” he cried.  “It’s the man—­not the money.  I see it now.  I haven’t got tuppence to my name.”

She turned her eyes down on him, brushing aside his coquetry with the sweep of her steady gaze.

“D’you mind?” she asked in her direct and simple way as they emerged on to the open Downs.

He sobered to her mood.

“Only in this way,” he answered, “that it was my father’s show, and I don’t like to have let it down.”

The girl deliberated.

“I don’t see that you could have helped it,” she said after a pause.

“No, I couldn’t,” he admitted. “He could have.  It was a One Man show.  And when the One Man went it was bound to go in time.  However, I’ve let nobody down but myself.  And I don’t care so much about the stuff.”

“No,” she said.  “You don’t want all that.  Nobody does; and it’s not good for you.”

Preacher Joe had bobbed up suddenly in his fair grand-daughter, as he did not seldom.  She was deliciously unaware of the old man’s presence at her side; but Jim Silver welcomed him as a familiar with lurking laughter.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and touched his hat.  Then he covered his daring swiftly.  “Except for the horses I wouldn’t cuc-care a hang,” he said loudly.  “They were the only things mum-money gave me.”

Gravely she peeped at him again.

“Shall you sell the lot?”

“I shall sell the ’chasers,” he answered.

“All but one,” she corrected.

“Which one?”

She nodded up the hill.

“The one you share with me.”

He laughed his resounding laughter.

“I’ll sell you my share,” he said.

“I won’t buy,” she answered firmly.

“Very well.  Then I’ll sell to Jaggers.”

Boy tapped Silvertail with such an increase of emphasis that the old mare snatched resentfully at her bit.

“You won’t,” she cried with the old fierce, girlish note in her voice which so delighted him.

“After he’s won the National,” continued the young man calmly.

“We’ll see—­after,” replied Boy.

They passed out of the Paddock Close on to the Downs.

“How’s he coming on?” asked Jim.

“Monkey Brand says he’s streets better than Cannibal,” replied the girl.  “We’ve never had anything to touch him in my time.”  This was one of few subjects on which the girl sometimes would flow.  “Of course he’s young for a National horse—­only five, and she’s in her prime.  But he’s got the head of an old horse on the body of a young one.  Nothing flurries him—­once you can get him going.”

“And the trouble is there’s only one person who can get him going,” mused the young man.

“I don’t know about that,” she answered tartly.  “He’s only run the once in public.  And that time he ran rings round his field.  Albert was riding—­not me.”