"I had thought," I whispered sourly to Eloise, "that I would at least have this first evening alone with you." Eloise laughed. "Oh, he comes when he pleases, and I—I send him home when I please." He had greeted me pleasantly, but during supper he paid little attention to me. Once he laughed at my study of forestry, and added, "And to go to Germany for it, when you might have gone to England!" After supper, when I had gone with Aunt Lucretia to the barn to help her with a sick colt, I smelt the odor of his cigar coming up from our old seat under the elm. I grew bitter at the thought that anyone but I should sit there with Eloise. My Aunt must have noticed this, for she called: "Come in here—both of you. This isn’t fair to Jack." Aunt Lucretia and Colonel Goff could never meet ten minutes in their lives without a heated argument over American and English horses. She generally worsted him, because she had all the records at her tongue’s end, and because in any kind of controversy she was fearless. For an hour to-night, and until he left, she scored him fearlessly. "Take that nick-tailed horse of yours," said Aunt Lucretia, "Colonel Goff, couldn’t you do better than that in England?" There were two things which always especially incensed her; one was to cut off a horse’s tail and the other to import an animal from England, when a better one might be had here. Colonel Goff explained that there were no such horses in America. "He is a four-mile hurdler," said he. "You’ve nothing of the kind in this blooming country." "Why, madam, he holds the record jump behind the Quoin hounds at Melton-Mowbry. The kill was in the main driveway of a manor and his rider cleared the picket fence to be in first. That fence measured five and a half feet and to this day it is the record at Melton-Mowbry." "A four-miler, that means a running horse," said my Aunt. "Of course we have them. And a hurdler—that’s only a jumping horse. Now, we’ve never cared much for jumpers. Why, I’ve a mule in my barn that can go over a ten rail fence any day. Uncle Ned says she just climbs it; anyway, I’ve never been able to build one high enough to keep her out of the cornfield on the other side. But there’s Eloise’s Satan, son of Young Hickory, scion of General Jackson’s Truxton. The man his sire is named for used to beat your English at any kind of a game at New Orleans, and I’ll wager that Satan would be a mighty hurdler and high jumper if he only had a chawnce," she said, smiling, in funny mimicry of Goff. "Fawncy!" laughed Goff, twisting his mustache. "Why, he couldn’t jump over a chalk line! It’s all in the training and pedigree! My Nestor colt holds the record for the Melton-Mowbry meet, and his high jump was five feet six." My Aunt turned the subject as if it were forgotten. But I knew she never forgot, and that she had something up her sleeve.