A silence ensued. The Professor was temporising, but by the time his glass was empty, he felt a little more able to open the ball. "I suppose you wonder why I am here?" he suggested, standing on one leg, and looking more like a heron than ever. "The truth is, I--er, wish to speak to you about my sister's--er--infatuation--" "For Mr. Chris?" exclaimed Min, though all her sympathies were really with Carlton Mackrell and his Trotting proclivities. "Well, Master Frank, a good son makes a good husband all the world over--" "No, I am glad to say she has so far not committed _that_ folly," said the Professor, "at least to my knowledge." Min snorted. What did this fossil know about love, indeed, that he should speak so slightingly of it? The idea! "Infatuation for what, then?" she inquired. "Come, Master Frank, out with it, and let's hear the worst, though I'm sure it can't be anything very bad where Miss Gay's concerned." The Professor looked hopelessly around. Why did not Mr. Toplady come in, he wondered? Men are so much easier to tackle than women, and Min was always so brusque and business-like. "My sister's infatuation (there's no other word that meets the case), is for a form of sport that I am given to understand is patronised by people who have an even lower moral standard than the followers of horse-racing. I refer to Trotting." Min Toplady bridled visibly, strong supporters as she and her husband were of the sport he decried, and she began to see how the land lay. "Well, I'm sure!" she exclaimed. "You've got no business to speak like that about what you don't understand. You'll excuse me, Master Frank, but you don't know what you're talking about. Me and my 'usband goes Trotting whenever we can get away, and we don't consider ourselves as dishonourable and low, as you seem to think Trotting folk are, not by no manner of means--" In obedience to a gesture from her, the barmaid appeared with a second glass of punch, deftly removed the empty one from behind the Professor's back, and disappeared. The Professor turned nervously round, and was agreeably surprised to find a full glass awaiting his attention. Surely he had finished the first? He supposed not, however, and really, after that tirade, he felt the need of a little comfort. He raised the glass, and looked through it to the window. "I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Minnie, far from it. I fear I am unfortunate in expressing myself. I mean that people are talking about my sister associating herself with a sport"--he hesitated for a moment as though swallowing a bitter pill--"that as yet has failed to attract people of her own class." Had Mrs. Toplady been a snob, here was another remark to form a bone of contention.