But Sylla made a great mistake if she thought that her making a bet on the result of this race would shock Lady Mary. The Ladies Ditchin had known what it was as girls to lose their quarter's allowance over one of their father's unlucky favourites for a big race; and Lady Mary all her life had been far too accustomed to regard backing an opinion as the strongest proof of sincere belief in it to feel in the least shocked at anybody holding similar views. She had indeed told her husband, as soon as the fact of her son being entered for this race came to her knowledge, that she must have her usual wager of ten pounds on the result. All the sporting instinct of her nature had been aroused, and Jim's entering the lists against the Rockcliffe champion had gone far to reconcile her to such an infringement of her programme as was involved in their attending the Rockcliffe games. "Your brother is a good runner, I presume, Miss Bloxam?" inquired Lionel Beauchamp, who was sitting with Blanche on the other side of the marquee. "Yes, Jim is fast and has won several 'gentlemen's' races. I don't want to brag, Mr. Beauchamp, but we Bloxams are all pretty good at those sort of things, and of course that's all as it should be with my brothers; but with us girls I don't know that it works quite so well. We can all dance, but we can none of us draw. We all play lawn tennis pretty well, but we can't play the piano; can all ride an awkward horse, but can neither sing a note in Italian nor any other language. And you--are you fond of any of these things? It is so difficult to tell what a man likes in London." "Yes," rejoined Beauchamp, "in the London world we are wont to rave about matters we really don't care a rush about, to affect aesthetic tastes which we have not got, and the pretension to which entraps us into much foolish speaking. We go to all sorts of entertainments we don't care about, simply because other people go. You must not betray me, Miss Bloxam, but I declare I think one passes no pleasanter afternoon in London than when witnessing a good match at Lord's with a pleasant party on a warm day." "Ah, we are all cricketers down here in Fernshire, boys and girls, men and women; we believe we invented the game, and in the old days stood pre-eminent in it. However, we now number so many disciples, and they have profited so much by our teaching that we are like the old man who, "'To teach his grandson draughts then his leisure did employ, Until at last the old man was beaten by the boy.'" "Well, we must hope the old county is not going to be beaten this afternoon; for I take it your brother represents Fernshire, and Montague England, and the race by all accounts is reduced pretty well to a match between them. But see, there go the competitors!" and Beauchamp pointed to five men who, with overcoats thrown loosely over their flannels, were making their way down to the quarter-mile starting-post.