“Birds of a feather,” said the sententious Trimble, “play the fool together. I say, what about our seats, though?”
“They are bagged,” said I, getting my face clear for a moment. “I couldn’t keep them.”
“I dare say. You mean you were so busy spooning about with girls you never thought of it. All right, Miss Molly,” said Warminster.
“I think we could squash up a bit here,” said I meekly.
“Looks as if you could,” said Langrish. “Squash away then.” And, to the wrath and indignation of the whole stand, the Philosophers crowded in, in a solid phalanx, and proceeded to accommodate their eight persons in the space usually allotted to two. It took some time for the other seat-holders to appreciate the humour of the manoeuvre, and before then the bell had rung for the first race, and Dicky had returned with the brandy-balls, which he deftly smuggled into my hand as he trotted past.
It was now easy to “square” the Misses Redwood, who for a blessed half-hour cried truce. It was in vain that I suggested that they had better not plaster their faces and frocks more than could be helped with the sticky substance of their succulent pabulum. They contemptuously ignored my right to make any suggestion of the kind, and I finally abandoned them to their fate.
The first few events were trial heats, in which we as a body were not specially interested; but when the bell rang up for the Hundred Yards under fifteen, the Sports had begun for us in earnest.
Leaving the two Daughters of Eve with the bag of brandy-balls between them, I clambered out of my place to perform the last rites for Warminster, who was to carry the colours of Sharpe’s against Dicky Brown of the day boys, Muskett of Selkirk’s, and another outsider.
It went a little to my heart to be rubbing down somebody else’s calves but Dicky’s on an occasion like this. But such is life. Patriotism goes before friendship, and times do come when one must wish confusion to one’s dearest brother.
So I rubbed down one of Warminster’s calves while Trimble rubbed the other, and Langrish gave him a word of advice about his start, and Coxhead arranged to call on him for his spurt twenty yards from the finish. With the exception of the other evening when he arrived at my mother’s party I had never seen Warminster so meek and nervous. He behaved exactly as if we were taking a last farewell, and would, I think, have embraced us had we encouraged him to do so.