"I'm glad of it," she said, with as much trace of vindictiveness as her beauty specialist would have permitted. "They're an awful low-class crowd. They came over to my table one night in Shirley's, after I'd met them only once, and butted in on a rich gentleman friend of mine from Washington. They run up an awful bill on him and never offered even to buy cigars, and then when he was gone for a minute to pick out our wagon, they tried to get fresh with me right in front of mother. I'm glad somebody stung 'em." A very thick-set man, with an inordinately broad jaw and an indefinable air of blunt aggressiveness, came past them and nodded to J. Rufus with a grudging motion toward his shapeless slouch hat. "Who's that?" she asked. "Jake Block," he replied. "A big owner with so much money he could bed his horses in it, and an ingrowing grouch that has put a crimp in his information works. He's never been known to give out a tip since he was able to lisp 'mamma.' He eats nothing but _table d'hôte_ dinners so he won't have to tell the waiters what he likes." Jake Block, on some brief errand to the press box, returned just as J. Rufus was starting down to the betting-shed, and he stopped a moment. "How are you picking them to-day, Wallingford?" he asked perfunctorily, with his eye on Beauty Phillips. "Same way," confessed Wallingford. "I haven't cashed a ticket in the meeting. I have the kind of luck that would scale John D. Rockefeller's bank-roll down to the size of a dance-program lead pencil." "Well," said Jake philosophically, his eyes still on the Beauty, "sometimes they come bad for a long time, and then they come worse." At this bit of wisdom J. Rufus politely laughed, and the silvery voice of Beauty Phillips suddenly joined his own; whereupon J. Rufus, taking the hint, introduced Mr. Block to Miss Phillips and her mother. Mr. Block promptly sat down by them. "I've heard a lot about you," he began, "but I've not been around to see _The Pink Canary_ yet. I don't go to the theater much." "You must certainly see my second-act turn. I sure have got them going," the Beauty asserted modestly. "What do you like in this race, Mr. Block?" "I don't like anything," he replied almost gruffly. "I never bet outside of my own stable." "We're taking a small slice of Bologna," she informed him. "I suppose he's about the--the wurst of the race. Guess that's bad, eh? I made that one up all by myself, at that. I think I'll write a musical comedy next. But how do you like Bologna?" she hastily added, her own laugh freezing as she saw her feeble little joke passed by in perplexity. "You never can tell," he replied evasively. "You see, Miss Phillips, I never give out a tip. If you bet on it and it don't win you get sore against me. If I hand you a winner you'll tell two or three people that are likely to beat me to it and break the price before I can get my own money down." Beauty Phillips' wide eyes narrowed just a trifle.