"Shall we have this one?" she inquired, much to the Professor's surprise and confusion. "Come along"--and before he could remonstrate, she had manœuvred him among the couples waltzing by, and he was executing his old-fashioned steps, precisely if not briskly. After one circuit of the room, accomplished with difficulty, and much bumping against indignant couples, owing to erratic steering, the Professor stopped abruptly and made a rush from the room, dragging Lossie by the arm with him. He subsided upon a couch in an exhausted condition, and producing an enormous red silk handkerchief, mopped his heated brow with it. "You're only a bit out of practice," she said, pretending not to notice his little gasps for breath. "Shall we have the supper ones?" she said. "I've kept them for you, and one square in the second half." "Certainly, certainly," Frank Lawless replied, scratching his initials on her programme, "but _don't_ be late for supper. Draughty, dangerous things dances," and he shook his head disapprovingly. Chris Hannen, who had long had his suspicions of Miss Lossie's intentions on the Professor (failing Carlton Mackrell), strolled up, intent on mischief, and Lossie, pretending to see a friend in the distance, left the two men together. "Rather out of training, eh, Professor?" said Chris chaffingly. "Not quite clean inside, as they say. Come down to Epsom for a few days, and ride a gallop or two; do you a world of good." The Professor shuddered. "I have not ridden for some years," he said, "though I was considered a good horseman as a boy. Not across country," he explained. "I used to ride every day in the park." "On a fat pony with a leading rein, no doubt," Chris thought to himself. "I never jumped anything," the Professor went on earnestly, "but I could hold my own on the flat--" "Of your back," Chris supplemented. "And I never hunted--" Chris believed him, as he waxed indignant over the cruelty done to the fox in fox-hunting. "Why not trail a red herring across the country and let the hounds follow?" he demanded excitedly. "If only some fox-hunters could get hold of you," cried Gay, who had come up behind them, "there wouldn't be a bit of you left!" Chris chuckled as he led the girl away, but the eminent gentleman-jockey did not look his old, confident self that evening, and Gay put her own construction on it, as the band struck up a lively waltz. "You're overtrained, old chap," she said, "too fine drawn--wasting again, I suppose, to ride another glorious winner, or achieve a more than usually severe purler"; but she did not, as she would once have done, smile as she said it. "No," he replied, "I'm not overtrained, and I'm not anticipating another 'downer' just yet--not at racing anyhow," he added to himself, his face becoming serious.