"You don't seem to have troubled much about your Trotters lately," said Lossie presently as they turned into Berkeley Square. "Yet here is poor Carlton hounded out of England, treated like any low welsher, because you fancied a wretched Gold Vase! I wonder you dare show your face at the Meetings as you do!"
"I shouldn't," said Gay with spirit, "if I had a face as sour as yours is at this moment! Really, Lossie, when I look at you, I feel thankful I wasn't born a beauty—it makes you leave everything else—manners, good temper, such lots of nice things, to chance, and the odds are forty to one!"
"Oh, we can't all be a dear, artless little thing, truckling to men's brutal prejudices—one reason you are so popular with them is, because you pretend you don't want women to have the vote!" cried Lossie.
"Nor do I!" cried Gay warmly. "I consider an excited, shrieking crowd of sober women clamouring for their rights, more indecent than a crowd of men drunk who don't clamour, and when it comes to slapping policemen's faces, padlocking themselves to railings, and rolling in gutters, it makes me ashamed of wearing a petticoat!"
"Brains never were your strong point, Gay," said Lossie comfortably, and Gay emphatically thanked Heaven they were not.
"The most rabid shrieker of them all would become mild as milk, if her own little baby were put in her arms, and she had her own man to love her," declared Gay. "And as there aren't enough men to go round, why don't the women emigrate, and fulfil themselves somewhere else?"
"All women are not so primitive as you are," said Lossie, sneering, unaware that it was the capacity to feel love as well as evoke it, that made much of Gay's charm; at the back of all her follies was a heart of gold, while a cherry stone represented Lossie's own assets in that particular, save where Carlton was concerned.
But there was no time for further argument, for they found themselves jammed in the midst of a crowd delighted at the recrudescence of the horse, with his grace, beauty, speed, and spirit, just as ten years ago a similar crowd had assembled to see start for the same destination, that marvel of power and ingenuity which was expected to displace him—the motor-car.
The glorious days of the "Old Times" coach seemed to be revived when, drawn by four beautiful greys, their manes braided with red and white ribbons, their heads decked with red and white camelias, a clean-shaven, eager-faced young man, with keen dark eyes, the correct blackness of whose attire was broken by his large red and white buttonhole, brought his coach up with a flourish, and followed by shouts and cheers and many cries of "Good luck," shortly sent it on its way.
Smarter than ever in his tightly-fitting coat, showing the neatly-folded four-in-hand tie, and segment of scarlet gold-buttoned waistcoat, Godden sprang from the leaders' heads, and climbing to his place, blew a cheery blast upon his coach-horn. And then began the American's triumph, for he could not have driven a hundred yards before he found the reward of his enterprise in the way the people, whether on foot or awheel, recognised, and gave way to him as king of the road.