Even the old hands were getting a little weary, and found time to turn a speculative eye upon the strangers--the cheery, handsome man and the slim, well-groomed girl; and the Legend went round in ascending chromatics of incredulity. Some knew Hamer by accident, so to speak: “Behaved very decently over that Abbey Corner smash, don’t you know! Sporting and all that--gave a thumping big subscription to to-day’s business,” etc. etc., and wondered vaguely whether he might not be worth cultivating. The women with sons looked at Dandy and said that anybody married anybody nowadays, and that even Kitchen Tea might be made positively chic if the butter were spread thick enough. The women with daughters only were not interested. Dandy had ceased to be self-conscious, however. She was watching Lancaster at work with the same dreary chill of separation that she had experienced in the Lane. This was his life, this interchange of business and friendship to which she was an absolute stranger. Harriet was perfectly at ease in it, grumbling, grunting, cracking a joke with a passing farmer or summing-up a prize-winner in a pithy sentence--at ease and happy. “Dull enough to _you_, I expect,” she observed, detecting Dandy’s secret yawn. “We’re brought up to it, of course. Besides, it’s my trade. Rotten show, though! Rotten judging! Fool of a crowd! But all the same I couldn’t stop away, any more than Lanty Lancaster. I’ve grown to it, you see. When I was a kid it was my big blow-out of the year, and I’ve still got the same feeling for it, like Christmas Day and all that piffle. It isn’t the thing itself--it gets slacker and rottener every year, as I’m always telling them, especially Lanty Lancaster--it’s what it stands for, and all the years behind it. If ever I want to purr, it’s when I’m sitting on this shaky old stand, watching a flat-footed imitation of a horse going slap for the water. But you must be about fed up on it, I suppose! It’s as slow as Noah’s Ark, and, besides, it always rains.” She slipped the catch of the gamp to see if it worked, and shot a glance at the sun which should have sent it slinking over the horizon like a dog shouted to kennel. “We’re getting through to the jumping, though. You’ll find that a bit more enlivening. Stubbs is turning out--did I tell you? He’s got a mount that can jump about as much as a hedgehog, but he thinks he’s going to win all right. It’s no use _my_ jawing; he won’t take anything from _me_. I hope he’ll behave decently, that’s all, and not get slanging the judges. Trust Stubbs to have been where the sun is shining, even though it always rains!”