Gladys Underbunk gave me one of her grateful glances. She said that she would go out in the car with me Saturday if I would promise to talk sense. So I promised. * * * * * As we read Mr. Mudison's fragmentary diary for some weeks we see how evidently the old campaigner is being enmeshed by the simple little Mrs. Underbunk. He frankly admits that he is in love, but he has been in love a hundred times before. He frankly admits that never before has his heart been so deeply affected. Curiously, he makes no mention of Mrs. Radigan. He is happy in his unhappiness. He is not dreaming of matrimony. It is evident that he has given it no thought, as he regards it out of the question for a man of his small income and many clubs. He does not want to win Mrs. Underbunk, for several times when the things she says make it clear that he has only to ask, we find him hurriedly turning the conversation to more serious matters; we see him abandoning her for days while he whirls madly around the country in his car, or sits for hours at the Ping-pong Club gazing despairingly into the depths of his Scotch. Mr. Mudison's conduct reminds one of the practice manoeuvres in the army, where one division is pitted against another, each striving to win a technical victory. He seeks by a series of masterly advances to surround the charming Mrs. Underbunk, and to have her declared his captive in theory. Then he would beat a hasty retreat. Poor Mudison! There is something in his reference to her grateful glances, her quiet smiles, her caustic retorts, that convinces us that the warfare is real, and that it is he who is being enmeshed. The story unconsciously unfolded by him is the same old one of love, and not worth consideration where there is so much that is valuable, giving, as it does, a picture of this well-known man and his time. Mr. Mudison repeats himself a great deal. We find very much the same reflections concerning Mrs. Radigan's small dance and Mrs. Duff's ball at Flurry's as are scattered through his notes on the affair at the Twitters'. So these are omitted from his edited papers to allow fuller space for his account of his afternoon at the races with Mrs. Underbunk and several other smart people. CHAPTER XXX _At the Races_ "Horse-racing is undoubtedly the sport of kings," I observed to Mrs. Underbunk, as we sat on the club-house balcony at Morris Park, yesterday. "Undoubtedly," she said sweetly. "But kings, you know, are a pretty bad lot." Of course she did not really mean it, but she has a way of railing at things just to be clever, yet it struck me that there might possibly be some underlying sense in her remark. It was rather unfair of her, however, as she had just cashed in on Morgan Styne's Sassafras at 10 to 1. When I suggested that she was a bit inconsistent, she retorted that she had only a woman's passion for gambling.