ribbon fluttering against the roan's neck, on suddenly discovering him thinks, "Good Lord, the kid looks little more than an idiot!"
His greeting to Finch, when the boy sought him out among the groups of men and horses in the enclosure behind the arena, was only a nod. He continued his conversation with a rigid-looking officer in the uniform of an American lieutenant. Finch had seen this man taking part in several jumping events. He had followed Renny with the red ribbon.
Finch stood humbly by, listening to their talk of horseflesh and hunting. Mutual admiration beamed from their eyes. At last Renny, glancing at his wrist watch, said, "Well, I must be getting on. By the way, this is my young brother, Finch, Mr. Rogers."
The American shook hands with the boy kindly, but looked him over without enthusiasm.
"Grown fast, I suppose," he commented to the elder Whiteoak, as they turned away together.
"Oh yes," returned Renny. "No bone to speak of," and he added, apologetically: "He's musical."
"Is he studying music?"
"He was, but I stopped it last summer after he failed in his matric. I feel regularly up against it with him. Now the music is cut off, he has taken to play-acting. It seems that he'd rather do anything than work. But I dare say he'll turn out all right. Sometimes the most unpromising colt, you know. . . ."
They were now crossing an open paved space, unlighted save by the blurred beam from a motor-car cautiously moving among the horses that were being led to stable or station by shouting attendants. However, a murky daylight made it still possible to distinguish one face from another.
An ostler, running across the yard, slipped on the thin layer of mud that covered the pavement and plunged forward, his bullet head coming in violent contact with the stomach of a burly fellow leading a rearing blanketed horse.
He roared: "Keep your blurry 'ead out of my stum-
