"Buck up, Master Frank," Min encouraged him, "and have another drop of punch before you go home. Your heart's in the right place--at least it always was when I had the looking after the boys and Miss Gay, and you only want just telling what to do, which is to let well alone." The Professor accepted the punch (in a smaller glass this time) and drained it at a gulp, though it was insidious stuff, he feared, and treacherous. Dreading further criticisms of himself, he seized his hat, and grasping Min's hand, worked it like a pump handle, then started for the door with a little run, breathing a sigh of relief when he reached the pavement. Fortunately, whatever his head might be, his legs were of cast-iron, and he slipped nimbly enough into a hansom, just managing to jerk out his address to the cabby, before he fell fast asleep. The stopping of the cab woke him, and hurriedly paying the man double his fare, he admitted himself with his latch-key, and proceeded on tiptoe to his study to finish his interrupted nap, taking the precaution to first lock the door. There was more of wily Brer Rabbit in the Professor's composition than most people supposed. CHAPTER X THE NOTORIOUS GAY Gay and the Professor were sitting at luncheon, the girl still highly delighted with her recent success, and laughing as she described Lossie Holden's disgust at Min Toplady. "She called her low, Frank, fancy that! Dear old Min, who was always so good to us, and never said an unkind word. You remember her well enough, don't you?" The Professor agreed that he did, though he felt that his recent interview with the lady in question did not justify him in amplifying his sister's description of her amiability. He fidgeted nervously with his letters (mostly circulars), then ran his knife down the wrapper of a newspaper which lay by his plate. "Why have they sent me this, I wonder?" he said. He had not long to wait for an answer to his question, for upon smoothing out the paper, his attention was instantly attracted to the front page. The next moment, with a startled exclamation, he hurled the paper from him, pushed back his chair, and walked to the window, rather to Gay's astonishment, though he always became "light-headed," as she called it, when anything but the obviously expected happened. She snatched the paper up, and the next minute broke into a ripple of laughter. What she saw was a full-page illustration of the Trotting at Waterloo Park, Silver Streak winning, and inset at one corner a remarkably life-like snapshot of herself, in close conversation with "Brusher" Tugwood. Below was some letterpress giving her name, and describing her as a new recruit to the sport, with one or two personal compliments with which she could easily have dispensed. The snapshot was deeply blue-pencilled round, while in the margin appeared a big note of interrogation, evidently ironic.