Chris's eye fell on a letter from Gay Lawless among his correspondence, and his face brightened as he opened it.
"Dear Chris," he read, "I shall be very glad to see you any day for tea and a chat. I've got the Trotting mania badly, and though I know it isn't much in your line, I must talk to somebody about it, and dear old Frank is so difficult to interest on any subject except science. If you're not racing anywhere, do come in to tea to-morrow afternoon. Lossie's coming, and I also expect Mr. Mackrell, who thinks he has found a couple of useful Trotters for me. I am so anxious to begin.—Yours sincerely,
"GAY LAWLESS."
Chris Hannen digested the news with mixed feelings. "Gay's mad on Trotting," he thought, "and it's no sort of game for her. Carlton Mackrell has no business to help her, though, to do him justice, after what he said the other day, I can't accuse him of aiding and abetting exactly. He is deadly in earnest about Gay, and he'll have opportunities enough now, confound him!"
Yet Chris smiled as he folded her letter up, and put it into his pocket—the breastpocket. "All's fair in love and—racing, I suppose, whether it's jumping or Trotting."
Mrs. Summers, Chris's housekeeper, came in at that moment, and interrupted his thoughts, which were somewhat interfering with his breakfast. She had occupied to Chris the same position as Min Toplady did to Gay, but in appearance was a direct contrast, for tall, angular, and determined-looking, she inspired awe in all save her familiars, who were few.
Her young master was the very apple of her eye, and she strove to supply the dreadful want in his life caused by the loss of his mother. Just she and two others knew how terribly he felt that loss, for his mind was an open book to her, and undemonstrative and practical as he invariably was, he sometimes dropped a remark that showed his thoughts were never far away from his sorrow.
"She was my pal," he said once to Gay, "the only real pal I ever had. I don't think we had any secrets from each other—certainly no guilty ones, thank God—and now she's gone, I realise bitterly how much more I might have done to make her happy. She was easily pleased, bless her, for all she wanted was to be with me, but she never intruded, and I remember so well how she used to propose something she thought would please me, and say: 'If you don't mind, lovie?' as though she thought that perhaps she bored me sometimes." Only Gay, and Mrs. Summers and Aunt Lavinia knew the tremendous depth of feeling, the capacity for suffering, that lay under Chris Hannen's easy-going, bantering ways, and if the housekeeper used all her tact and kindliness to make up to him, if ever so little, something of what he had lost, Gay Lawless, who had the clearest possible insight into people's characters, never made the mistake of volunteering any sympathy.
She knew Chris hated it, as she did, and appreciated his silent pluck as much as he did the reserves of courage that had not yet been called up in herself.
"Good-morning, Master Chris," said Mrs. Summers (he was always Master Chris to her, never having grown up in her eyes), but her face assumed a stern expression as she regarded the only half-finished breakfast.