l you
ever forget yesterday?"

"Oh, don't speak of it!"

"Can't help it." The Colonel waxed enthusiastic at the mere memory of
the great occasion. "Whoopee!" he cried. "What a race it was!"

"To think," said Miss Alathea, "that I--_I_--should enter a race-track!"

"To think that _I_--should stay out of one!"

"It was all your fault, Colonel," said Miss Alathea. "In your excitement
after the race you grasped my hand and I was compelled to follow."

"How strange!" exclaimed the Colonel, slowly, with a slight smile
tickling at the corners of his mouth. "At times I fancied you were in
the lead, I following."

"Colonel," said the lady slowly, "perhaps I might as well confess. I've
made a discovery. The sin isn't so much in looking at the horses
run--it's in betting on them. That's where souls are lost."

"And likewise money," said the Colonel, nodding, gravely.

"So, Colonel, if you'll promise not to bet, I've no objection to your
attending the races in moderation."

In delighted amazement the Colonel forgot that that last julep could be
brought to a quick end by hurried management and took a hasty and a
mammoth swallow. "What!" he cried. "Can I believe it? Miss 'Lethe,
you're an angel! It's the last drop in my cup of happiness!"

Miss Alathea shyly smiled--smiled, indeed, a bit shame-facedly. "There's
one condition, Colonel--that you take me along--yes, to watch over you."

"Take you with me?" said the Colonel. He paused in puzzled contemplation
of her for an instant. "Oh, I catch on. You'll go with the children to
see the animals!" He laughed. "You rather like it." He became
enthusiastic. "No more knot-holes or trees for us! At last--two souls
with but a single thought, two hearts that beat when Queen Bess won!
Here's to our future happiness!"

He raised the glass and would have drunk from it, but, now, alas! the
glass was empty. It surprised and grieved him, but, when Miss Alathea
held her hand out, quietly, for the vessel which had held the final
julep but which now held it no longer, he yielded it up gracefully nor
asked her to refill it.

As Miss Alathea placed the empty glass upon the side-board Madge entered
from the hallway. She ran up to the Colonel. "I heard you'd come," she
said, "an' couldn't wait. Say, air it all fixed about Queen Bess?"

"Fixed?" cried the gallant horseman. "Well I should remark! Queen Bess
is sold and paid for and a draft for the assessment forwarded to the
Company. Inside o