Old Mat, standing a little behind the crowd at the ropes, had watched the scene.

“One o’ my lads,” he said in his mysterious wheeze to the big young man at his side. “‘No smokin’, swearin’, or bettin’ in my stable!’—­that’s Miss Boy’s rule.  Gets it from Mar.”  The girl passed them swiftly and the old man hid his betting-book behind him.  “Well, Boy, sossed him?” he asked innocently.

“He’s not the only one,” retorted the girl.

“O, I’m not bettin’, Boy,” pleaded the old man in the whimsical whine which he adopted when addressing his daughter.  “Don’t go and tell your mother that now.  It wouldn’t be right.  Reelly it wouldn’t.  I’m only makin’ a note or two for Mr. Silver here.”

The girl was lost in the crowd by the ropes.

“She’d ha’ come and sossed me, too, only you was with me,” wheezed the old man confidentially.  “You stick close to me, there’s a dear.  You’re like a putection to an old man.  She won’t do me no ’arm while you’re by, de we.”

The other smiled.  He was an upstanding young man, with the shoulders and the bearing of a soldier; and there was something large and slow and elemental about him.  He wore white riding-breeches and tan-coloured boots.  The blood polo-pony under the elms, with the little group of coachmen and grooms gathered in an admiring circle round him, was his:  and those who had seen Mat drive on to the course in the morning knew that the young man had ridden over the Downs from Putnam’s with him.

Boy took her place at the ropes.

The young man found himself standing at her side.  He did not watch the race.  That keen young face at his side, so self-contained and strong, absorbed him.

Once the girl looked up swiftly, and he was aware of her gray eyes, that flashed in his and were instantly withdrawn, to follow the bob of the heads of the jockeys lifting over a fence on the far side of the course.

“Lul-like my glasses?” he asked, with a slight stutter.

“No,” she said.  “I can see.”

Later she climbed on to the top of an upturned hamper.  As the horses made the turn for home, he heard her draw her breath.

“Is he down?” he asked.

“No,” she said.  “He’s got ’em beat.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s begun to ride,” replied the girl briefly.

Old Mat was nibbling his pencil in the rear.

“How’s it going, Boy?” he wheezed.

“All right,” replied the girl.  “He’s through now.”

The dirty green of the Woodburn colours topped the last fence; and Goosey Gander came lolloping down the straight, his jockey, head on shoulder, wary to the end, easing him home.

“That’s a little bit o’ better,” said Old Mat comfortably, totting up his accounts.

“By Jove, he’s a fine horseman!” cried the young man with boyish enthusiasm.

“Monkey Brand!” said the girl, without emotion.  “One of the has-beens, I should say.”