“I think I’m going to be sick,” Ruth said, when she and Brat were left alone in the stand.

“I don’t wonder,” said Brat.

“Why?” she was surprised into saying, this being not at all the reaction she expected.

“Three ices on top of dressed crab.”

“It is not anything I ate,” she said, repressive. “It’s that I have a delicate nervous system. Excitement makes me feel ill. I get sick with it.”

“I should go and get it over,” Brat advised.

“Be sick, you mean!”

“Yes. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

“If I sit very still I may feel better,” Ruth said, giving up.

Ruth was feeling her lack of importance to-day. She avoided horses too consistently for the rest of the year to claim any right to exhibit any on this one day at Bures, so she sat in the stand in her neat grey flannel and looked on. It was to her credit that she did not grudge her twin her well-earned place in the sun, and was passionately anxious that Jane should come first in her class.

“There’s Roger Clint with Eleanor.”

Brat looked for the couple and found them.

“Who is Roger Clint?”

“He has a big farm near here.”

Roger Clint was a black-browed young man, and he was being old-friendly with Eleanor.

“He’s in love with Eleanor,” said Ruth, having failed with one try for drama.

“A very good person to be in love with,” Brat said, but his heart contracted.

“It would be a very good thing if she married him. He has lots of money and a lovely big house and simply scads of horses.”

Against his will Brat asked if Eleanor were thinking of it.

Ruth considered the pros and cons or this as they fitted into her dramatic framework.

“She is making him serve his seven years for her. You know: like Jacob. He is simply frantic about it, poor Roger, but she is La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

La Belle Dame Sans Merci bade Mr. Clint a temporary farewell and came up to join them in the stands as the Novices under Ten filed into the ring.

“Do you know that Tony scraped into this by the skin of his teeth,” she said, sitting down by Brat. “He is going to be ten the day after to-morrow.”

There were eleven novices, the youngest being a fat child of four in a black velvet jockey cap, who bounced about on a solid pony of which she had no control whatever.

“Well, at least Tony never looked as awful as that, even in his bad days,” Eleanor said.

“Tony looks wonderful,” Ruth said, and Tony did indeed look wonderful. As Eleanor had said on an earlier occasion, Tony had the root of the matter in him.

The novices walked, and trotted, and cantered, under the lenient eye of the judges, and presently the seeding began. Even from the stand the fanatic determination in Tony’s snail-black eyes was plain to see. He was going to be in the money or die in the attempt. From being six possibles they were narrowed down to four, but these four kept the judges puzzled. Again and again they were sent out to canter and brought back for inspection, and sent out to canter again. There were only three prizes and one must go.

It was at this stage that Tony played what he evidently considered his ace. As he cantered along in front of the stand he got to his knees in the saddle and with a slight scramble stood up in it, straight and proud.

“Oh, God,” said Eleanor reverently and with feeling.

A ripple of laughter went through the stand. But Tony had another shot in his locker. He slipped to his knees, grabbed the front edge of the saddle, and stood on his head, his thin spider-legs waving rather uncertainly in the air.

At that a gale of laughter and applause broke out, and Tony, much gratified, resumed his seat and urged his astonished pony, who had slowed to a trot, into a canter again.

That of course settled the matter very nicely for the judges, and Tony had the mortification of seeing the three rosettes handed to his rivals. But his mortification was nothing to the mortification he had already inflicted on his preceptress.

“I hope I don’t see that child until I cool off,” she said, “or I am liable to take an axe to him.”

But Tony, having handed his pony over to Arthur, came blithely to the stands to find her.

“Tony, you little idiot,” she said, “what made you do a thing like that?”

“I wanted to show how I could ride, Eleanor.”

“And where did you learn to do those circus tricks?”

“I practised on the pony that mows the lawn. At school, you know. He has a much broader back than Muffet, and that’s why I wasn’t so steady to-day. I don’t think these people appreciate good riding,” he added, nodding his head at the offending judges.

Eleanor was speechless.

Brat presented him with a coin and told him to go and buy himself an ice.

“If I didn’t want to see Jane ride,” Eleanor said, “I would go and bury my shame in the ladies’ room. I’m curdled with humiliation.”

Jane, on Rajah, in her best riding things, was a pleasant sight. Brat had never seen her in anything but the shabby jodhpurs and shapeless jersey that she wore at home, and was surprised by this trim little figure.

“Jane has the best seat of all the Ashbys,” Eleanor said affectionately, watching the serious and efficient Jane making Rajah change his leg to order. “That is her only rival: that tall girl on the grey.”

The tall girl was fifteen and the grey very handsome, but the judges preferred Jane and Rajah. Jane might have lost for all the emotion she showed, but Ruth was rapturous.

“Good old Jane,” Simon said, appearing beside them. “A veteran at nine.”

“Oh, Simon, did you see!” Eleanor said, in agony again as she remembered.

“Cheer up, Nell,” he said, dropping a commiserating hand on her shoulder. “It might have been worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“He didn’t yodel,” Simon said.

At that she began to laugh, and went on laughing. “Oh, I suppose it is very funny,” she said, wiping her eyes, “and I expect I shall laugh over it for years, but at the moment I just wish I could be in Australia for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Come on, Nell,” he said. “It’s time to collect the horses,” and they went away together as Jane came to sit in the stand.

“This is the exciting class coming now. It isn’t very much to win a Fifteen and Under,” was her answer to Brat’s congratulations. “Some day I’ll be down there with them. With Aunt Bee, and Eleanor, and Simon, and Peggy, and Roger Clint, and all of them.”

Yes, there was Roger Clint. Eleanor was riding the long-backed bay mare Scapa, and Roger Clint was standing next to her on a chestnut with four of the longest and whitest stockings Brat had ever seen. While the judges walked down the row he and Eleanor talked quietly together.

“Who do you think will be first?” Jane asked.

Brat took his eyes from Eleanor and Clint and forced himself to consider the entry. The judge had sent Bee out to canter Chevron, the chestnut he was going to race this afternoon, and she was coming down in front of the stands now. He had never seen Bee in formal riding clothes, and was surprised again, as he had been with Jane. It was a new, serious, rather intimidating Bee.

“Who do you think, Brat?” Jane said again.

“Timber, of course.”

“Not Peggy’s horse? The one Dick Pope had?”

“Riding Light? No. He may win the jumping, but not this.”

And he was right. This was the judges’ first sight of Timber and they were too much impressed to be seduced even by the looks and reputation of Riding Light.

And it was a popular verdict. As Simon cantered Timber down in front of the stands after accepting the rosette the applause broke into cheering.

“Isn’t that the brute that killed old Felix?” a voice behind said. “They ought to shoot it instead of giving it prizes.”

Second was Peggy on Riding Light, looking flushed and pleased; her father’s extravagance had been justified. Third, rather unexpectedly, was Bee on Chevron.

“The Ashbys cleaning up as usual,” the voice said, and was instantly shushed, and the proximity of the Ashbys presumably indicated.

It was when the Open Jumping Class began that the real excitement of the day was reached, and Bee came to sit in the stand and share it with them.

“Number One, please,” said the loud-speaker, and Eleanor came into the ring on Scapa. Scapa was a careful and unemotional jumper, but could never be persuaded into standing away from her fences. By dint of patient schooling with a guard rail, Eleanor hoped that she had now persuaded her into better ways. And for half a round it worked, until Scapa noticed that there was no plaguey obstruction to beware of at the foot of these jumps, and began to go close in again, with the inevitable result. Nothing Eleanor could do would make her take off in time. She jumped “fit to hit the moon,” but came down in the wrong place, and the little battens of white-painted wood came down with her.

“Poor Nell,” said Bee. “After all her schooling.”

Number Two and Number Three did not appear to have been schooled at all.

“Number Four, please,” said the loud-speaker, and Riding Light appeared. Peggy’s “new outfit” consisted of a dark snuff-coloured coat a little too tight in the waist, and a pair of buff breeches a little too pale in the buff, but she looked well on the brown horse and handled him beautifully. Or rather, she sat still and let Riding Light do his stuff. He was a finished jumper who took the obstacles in his stride, propelling himself into the air in a long effortless curve and tucking his hind feet after him like a cat. He went out having done a perfect round.

“Number Five, please,” said the loud-speaker.

Number Five was Roger Clint’s mount with the long white stockings. “Do you know what he calls it?” Bee said. “Operation Stockings.”

“It’s very ugly,” Brat said. “Looks as if he had walked through a trough of whitewash.”

“He can jump, though.”

He could certainly jump, but he had phobia about water.

“Poor Roger,” laughed Bee, watching Stockings r............