"Oh," she answered, ever so sweetly. "Yes," he sighed affectedly, trying to look love-lorn, cocking his head with affected sadness and succeeding only in looking ridiculous. "Oh," she said sweetly again. If he had had sense he would have seen the sweetness was for ends of her own. "Oh, how sweet of you and how cruel of me, Braggy." Her tone was very clear. If he had only looked down the past he might have remembered that whenever she had called him Braggy she had been planning to do him. He sighed again, which shut his mouth the second time. Eloise, demurely, but inwardly nearly bursting, did likewise. "Well?" he asked, expectantly. "Yes," said Eloise encouragingly. "I mean—can’t—I now?" "There’s never a better time than the present, Braggy, you remember the school books say." Then she reached down and, pretending earnestness, said: "You’ve got a walk-over, it’s plain. It’s yours for the asking, Braggy. And so—well—it’s big odds I’m giving you, Braggy," and she laughed like a wood thrush, "but if you win that race I’ll be yours alone henceforth and forever, Braggy." He paled, taking her hand, which fell sidewise down past her saddletree, in his. "Oh Eloise—dearest,"—he started bookishly, but ended in his own way, which was mentally unlearned: "Gee—but I’ll win or bust!" "And if you don’t," began Eloise, ever so indifferently. "Of course you will," she smiled; "but if you don’t, Braggy, now dear, why you’ll just send me that set of seal-skins for that fashionable hennery I’m going to at Washington?" "Good! Good!" he cried boisterously. "What odds you give me! You against a hundred dollar seal-skin! Oh, my, let me get busy!" And he rushed off, smirking back sillily at her. "A saddle mare, a saddle, and a set of sealskins all in one day. Well, that’s going some," Eloise chuckled as she rode up to the fence where Uncle Jack stood. Reaching down from her saddle, she tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up into her laughing eyes, and flushed, for he had always loved her. "Jack, Jack, you are a dandy! You did it beautifully! O, the stride of that rush before you called her down! Say, how do you like my mare? Isn’t she a beauty?" "If you say so," he said slowly, testing her, "I’ll lay up the next heat; let _him_ win." He had remembered Goff’s bet. She flushed. Then she rapped him over the shoulder lightly with her whip. "Why, Jack, that would be horrible! Do you think I’d have made the bet if I hadn’t believed in you, loved you, brother mine?" Jack flushed. "Do you, Eloise—do you—"