Jack extended her hand. She looked very like the girl, Jacqueline Ralston, whom her old friends remembered and loved.
"I am so glad to see you, but please don't wish me good-luck; Jeanette must win, if either of us has the good fortune. She has been learning to be a better rider than I am.
"Do try and persuade my husband to be more cheerful. After agreeing to allow Jeanette and me to enter and showing a proper interest in our training, this morning he is suddenly depressed. I don't believe he has ever appeared more so save during the months when I ran for Congress and you were so impolite as to defeat me, Peter Stevens."
As his wife concluded the greeting of her three additional guests, Mr. Colter came forward.
"I do feel a surprising antagonism to Jeanette's and Jack's riding against each other in to-day's contest. I know it is too late now to offer any objection and not fair to be discouraging. But I don't believe I realized until this morning how large the number of spectators would be. It is a wonderful day and no one will remain at home."
Jack laughed and placed her arm on her husband's arm.
"Why should you mind our being rivals in the race if we do not? Neither do we seriously object to the size of our audience."
A quarter of an hour later a line of automobiles and of open carriages were on their way to the Club grounds. The motors far outnumbered the others, nevertheless there were a few carriages drawn by handsome horses. Other vehicles, less impressive, were being pulled along by smaller Western ponies, broken for driving as well as riding.
In their own car Jeanette sat facing her father with Lina on one side of her and Eda on the other. Via was between her stepmother and father.
In the midst of her own strong effort to appear indifferent, Jeanette was aware of the unusual gravity of her father and also of her younger sister's white seriousness. But then Via was always apt to catch other people's moods and more than usually sympathetic with her father.