"If Mr. Mendenhall doesn't sell that strawberry roan for a clean fifteen hundred, it'll be because polo has gone out of fashion," the veterinary approved, with waxing enthusiasm. "I've had my eye on them. That pale sorrel, there. You remember his set-back. Give him an extra year and he'll--look at his coupling!--watch him turn!--a cow-skin?--he'll turn on a silver dollar! Give him a year to make up, and he'll stand a show for the international. Listen to me. I've had my faith in him from the beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When he's ripe, ship him straight East." Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy's judgment, her eyes kindling with his in the warmth of the sight of the abounding young life for which she was responsible. "It always hurts, though," she confessed to Graham, "selling such beauties to have them knocked out on the field so quickly." Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her speech of any hint of affectation or show--so much so, that Dick was impelled to praise her judgment to Evan. "I can dig through a whole library of horse practice, and muddle and mull over the Mendelian Law until I'm dizzy, like the clod that I am; but she is the genius. She doesn't have to study law. She just knows it in some witch-like, intuitional way. All she has to do is size up a bunch of mares with her eyes, and feel them over a little with her hands, and hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get pretty nearly what she wants in the result--except color, eh, Paul?" he teased. She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her expense, in which Mr. Hennessy joined, and Dick continued: "Look at that filly there. We all knew Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a rickety old thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out of her old age, to a standard stallion; got a filly; bred it back with a thoroughbred; bred its filly foal with the same standard again; knocked all our prognostications into a cocked hat, and--well, look at it, a world-beater polo pony. There is one thing we have to take off our hats to her for: she doesn't let any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. Oh, she's cold-blooded enough. She's as remorseless as any man when it comes to throwing out the undesirables and selecting for what she wants. But she hasn't mastered color yet. There's where her genius falls down, eh, Paul? You'll have to put up with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer for your trap. By the way, how is Duddy?" "He's come around," she answered, "thanks to Mr. Hennessy." "Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. "He was just off his feed a trifle. It was more a scare of the stableman than anything else." CHAPTER XIII From the colt pasture to the swimming tank Graham talked with his hostess and rode as nearly beside her as The Fop's wickedness permitted, while Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were deep in ranch business.