He stared at her quizzically. Then he laughed and led her over to the rail. He glanced back at the crowd that pressed upon them from behind. Bending toward her he whispered: "He's just playing 'em. Great Scott! you didn't think _that_ was his speed, did you? Morrison was doing his best; Bunny was walking; that's all, just walking. You wait; you'll see the fastest hundred yards that was ever run on this old track. You hold your horses. Why, Morrison's trainer knows it's all off. The others--the 'also-rans'--are just waiting for the end. Morrison's trainer's running around down below like a chicken with its head off. You wait if you want to see a record smashed." And he pressed her arm reassuringly, and vanished. At the bottom of the stairs he collided with a small boy in a soiled and torn shirt waist. "Cancha see where yer goin'?" the small boy piped after him, then mounted the stairs whistling. He pushed his way through the crowd to the rail, and wriggled to a post. Despite the yells of "Down in front," that were flung at him from the lower tiers, he clung to his position resolutely. "There's Bunny!" he cried as the runners pranced up the track a second time. Wilma heard the lad's shrill pipe and glancing down caught his eye and smiled. He grinned. He sidled nearer to her and pressed close to the rail. Willie Trigger decided then and there that he had never before seen such a pretty girl. She was ever so much prettier, he calculated, than the new hired girl in the house next door,--at home. He had fallen desperately in love with _her_ at first sight. Then Wilma spoke to him and his boy heart bounded. "Do you know him, little man?" she asked, softly. He wished she had not called him "little man" particularly with so many about, but her voice was so gentle and her eyes were so beautiful that he forgave her in his heart straightway and answered, looking down, "Uh huh; he lives 'cross th' street from our house." Her eyes took on a greater brilliance then and a smile played about the corners of her pretty mouth. "So you are Willie Trigger, are you?" she asked so low that he alone might hear. "Oh, I know all about _you_; he told me." Willie Trigger never knew what joy it was to live until that instant. To think that _He_, the great Bunny, had told _Her_ all about _Him_! It rendered him for the moment speechless. Yet he gave no sign of the swelling of his heart unless a sudden kick at the post to which he clung, and a low, foolish laugh might be taken as a sign. He felt her hand upon his shoulder as the line of entries formed and was superlatively happy.