"Miss Gay!" she cried. "Well, I am surprised! Fancy meeting you here!" In a moment she was out of the cart, and had folded Gay to her ample bosom, while laughter and tears chased each other alternately across her comely face. Gay, for her part, was every bit as delighted to see her old nurse again, and quite oblivious of the scene about them, they climbed into the dogcart and sat, holding each other's hands, and chattering as only two women can. A great deal of what they talked about was of interest to nobody but themselves, but the horses racing past recalled Gay to the work in hand.
"Isn't it exciting, Min?" she cried, focussing her glasses as they sped past the stands, and round the bend to the back stretch. "I think it's ripping, and far more fun than galloping. What a smash there'd be if one of these sulkies—isn't that what they call the spider-looking thing they sit in?—ran into each other!"
But Min did not reply. Her eyes were riveted on the cluster of horses drawing round the corner into the home-stretch.
"I think we've won this," she exclaimed. Then becoming excited she began to bounce about in her seat.
"Go on, Bob!" she cried. "Set him alight! Oh, don't look round, it's all your own!"
Suddenly, fifty yards from the judges' stand, one of the back-markers came with a rattle wide on the outside, the driver urging his horse with the reins, and uttering weird cries which his charge apparently understood, for he put in all his knew, though, alas! he failed to "keep down," as they call it, and made a tangled break. Meantime Bob was going the shortest way home, sitting slightly forward, with his legs straight out in front of him like the rest.
A roar from the ring proclaimed the expected victory of yet another favourite. Min sank back in her seat, and her eyes shone with pride as she said:
"Bob just got there, miss; didn't he drive splendid?"
"Rather!" agreed Gay cordially. "But who's Bob?"
"Why, Bob's my man, Miss Gay, of course! Who else should he be?"