"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is over."
Miranda ascended the grass slope and saw the fillies canter down towards the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the slope.
"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she cried all in a breath.
Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.
"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.
There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs, with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and endurance.
"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his wife's. "Think of it!"
"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the meeting of old friends upon familiar ground—a miniature complete in beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst the boughs.
"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her eyes.
The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham Park.