Page:Wildwildheart00reesiala.pdf/102

pretty young creature might be, at the prospect of a jolly day.

Vera had, as she put it, taken pity on Gerald’s loneliness, and was driving in his car with him.

“You ought to feel very grateful,” she had remarked lazily at breakfast. “If I didn’t come with you, you’d have to get out and open every gate—there are five of them—on the way to the course.”

“I don’t believe Miss Merrill would mind opening the gates, would you, Miss Merrill?” asked Waring casually.

“She’ll have to open them for Dick,” answered Vera. “There’d be quite a scandal in the neighborhood if I allowed her to drive alone with you. I think it’s less likely to occasion gossip if you take an old married woman in your car.”

And so it was settled, and Ann sat in the front seat beside Dick Holmes, bumping along the somewhat uneven road in the hot sunshine. She told him that she had never been to a race meeting in her life, and he did his best to explain the working of the totalisator to her.

“Omoana only has one meeting a year, so they get in a little bit of everything. The course is under water in the winter, and the going isn’t too hard for the steeplechase now, though it’s really the flat racing season.”

“It’s the steeplechase Rodney Marsh is riding in, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Biddy asked me to put a shilling on Nigger for her,” he said. “And Jo brought me fourpence out of her money-box. I told them they ought both to be well spanked.”

“And did you spank them?”