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“They’ll run themselves to death,” commented Debrett, who knew his young America, “and is Jimmie to be one of the contestants?”

“He is,” replied Hawtry, “it’s a ‘free for all’ event and even Cecelia Anne may start if Jimmie allows it. She’s not thinking much about that though. You see, Jimmie has gone into training and she’s his trainer. I went out with them last Saturday morning to see how they manage. They marched me down to an untenanted little farm, back from the road. Jimmie carried the ‘riffle’ referred to in Cecelia Anne’s text and a handful of blank cartridges. Cecelia Anne carried Jimmie’s sweater, a bath towel, a large sponge, a small tin bucket and a long green bottle. I carried nothing. I was observing, not interfering.”

“Oh, that dear baby!” broke in Mrs. Hawtry, “such a heavy load!”

“She’s thriving under it, my dear.” Well, presently we arrived at our destination, and I saw that those kids had worn a little path, not very deep of course, all round what used to be rather a spacious ‘door yard.’ The winning-post was the pump. By its side Cecelia Anne disposed her burden like a theatrical ‘dresser’ getting things ready for his principal. She hung her tin pail on the pump’s snout and pumped it full of water, laid it beside the bath towel, threw the sponge into it, gave a final testing jerk to her tight little braids and divested herself of her jumpers and the dress she wore under them. Then she resumed the jumpers, took the rifle and crossed the ‘track.’ Jimmie, meanwhile, had stripped to trousers and the upper part of his bathing-suit, had donned his running shoes, set his feet in holes kicked in the ground for that purpose and bent forward, his back professionally hunched and in his hands the essential pieces of cork. Cecelia Anne gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they passed the pump, she was ahead. In the succeeding laps she kept a comfortable distance in the lead, until the end of the third when she sprinted for ‘home,’ grabbed the towel and, as Jimmie came bounding up, wrapped him in it, rubbed him down, fanned him with it, moistened his brow with vinegar from the long bottle, tied the sweater around his neck by its red sleeves and held the dripping sponge to his lips. Then she found time for me.

“Oh, father,” she cried, “did you ever see any body who could run as fast as Jimmie? Don’t you just know he’ll win that race?”

“There’s but one chance against it,” said I. “And really, Mr. Debrett, that boy can run. He’s a little bit heavy maybe, but he holds himself well together and keeps up a pretty good pace. I timed him and measured up the distance roughly afterward. It was pretty good going for a little chap. Cecelia Anne is so much smaller that we often forget what a little fellow he is after all. But that baby–whew–I wish you’d seen her fly. It wasn’t running. She just blew over the ground and arrived at the pump as cool as a cucumber although Jimmie was puffing like an automobile of the vintage of 1890.”

“You see,” said Jimmie to me as he lay magnificently on the grass waiting to grow cool while Cecelia still fanned him with the towel, “you see it don’t hurt her to pace me round the track.”

“Apparently not,” said I, and although he’s my own boy and I know him pretty well, I couldn’t for the life of me decide whether he, as well as Cecelia Anne, had really failed to grasp the fact that she beats him to a standstill every morning. I suppose we’ll know on the Fourth. If she runs, then he does not know. But if he refuses to let her run; it will be because he does know.”