Joses lay with his mop of red hair like a dingy and graying aureole against the pillow.

“D’you mind?” he asked.

Her eyes filled with kindness.  He seemed to her so much a child.

“What!  Her coming to see you here?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at him in her large and loving way.

“Of course I don’t,” she said, and added almost archly:  “And if I did I’m not sure it would make much difference.”

He found himself laughing.

She moved about the room, ordering it.

Then she returned to Putnam’s to seek her daughter.

* * * * *

After the National Boy had emerged from the cloud which had long covered her.

She returned home, radiant and impenitent.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” she said on the morning after her return.  “And I’ll forgive you, mother, for your lack of faith.”

“Thank you, my dear,” replied the other laconically.

“This once,” added Boy firmly.  “Now, mind!”

* * * * *

Mrs. Woodburn now gave her daughter Joses’s message.

The girl said nothing, but visited the cottage next morning.

She stood in the door, firm and fresh, the colour in her hair, the bloom on her cheeks, and looked at that mass of decaying man upon the bed.

“Are you bad?” she asked, anxious as a child.

“I suppose I’m not very good,” he answered.

She snatched her eyes away.

“Well, I congratulate you,” he said at last, quietly.

She sought for irony in his voice and eyes, and detected none.

“What on?”

“Your victory.”

Her face softened.

“Thank you.”

“You deserved to win,” continued the other, with genuine admiration.  “You rode a great race.  I couldn’t have believed a girl could have got the course if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”  His gaze met hers quite honestly.  “You see I didn’t count on the double fake.  I knew you were going to ride as Albert, but I’d quite forgotten the corollary—­that Albert might dress as you.  That’s where you beat me.”

The girl’s chest was rising and falling.

“Mr. Joses,” she said, “I didn’t ride the horse.”

His eyes sought hers, dissatisfied, and then wandered to the window.

“Well, well,” he said.  “We won’t argue about it.  Anyway, you won.”

Boy looked out of the window.

“I did try and deceive you into thinking I was going to ride,” she said with a quake in her voice.  “That was partly deviltry and partly to put you off.  I thought if you believed you could get back on us after the race you’d not try it on before.  Besides, I could never ride the course.  Three miles was my limit over fences at racing speed when I was at my best, and that’s some years since.”

He was quite unconvinced.