"Don't you trifle with me, boy!" replied Uncle Jake severely.
Derby day dawned as fair as turquoise sky and radiant sun could make it. I had slept badly. Until late the night before I had absorbed a haze of cigar smoke and the talk in the hotel lobby. Despite Blister's confidence I had become panicky as I listened. There had been so much assurance about several grave, soft-spoken horsemen who had felt that at the weight the favorite could not win.
"Nevah foh a moment, suh," one elderly well-preserved Kentuckian had said, "will I deny the Dillon mare the right to be the public's choice. But she has nevah met such a field of hosses as this, suh--and she lacks the bone to carry top weight against them."
There had been many nods of approval at this statement, and I had gone to the Dillon party for consolation. But when I reached their apartments I had found the judge more silent than ever, and Mrs. Dillon as nervous as myself. Only Miss Goodloe appeared as usual. Her drawl was soothingly indolent. She seemed entirely oblivious of any tenseness in the atmosphere, and I caught myself wondering what was behind those lazy-lidded blue eyes.
Back in the lobby once more I had found it worse than ever--so many were against the favorite. I had about decided that our hopes were doomed, when a call boy summoned me to the desk with the statement, "Gentleman to see you, sir."
There I had found Blister and I fairly hugged him as he explained that he had dropped in on the way to his "joint," as he called his hotel.
"Listenin' to the knockers?" he asked, reading me at once. "Furget it--them ole mint juleps is dead 'n' buried. You'll go dippy if you fall fur that stuff."
"Say, they've got you goin' right, ain't they?" Blister exclaimed. "Now listen! _She can carry the grand-stand 'n' come home on the bit_! Get that fixed in your nut, 'n' then hit the hay."
"Thanks, I believe I shall," I said, and I had followed his advice, though it was long until sleep came to me.
But now as the blue-gray housetops of Louisville sparkled with tiny points of light, and the window-panes swam with pink-gold flame, I looked out over the still sleeping city and laughed aloud at my fears of the night before.
"A perfect day," I thought. "The favorite will surely win, and Blister and Uncle Jake and Mrs. Dillon will be made perfectly happy. A beautiful day, and a fitting one in which to fix the name of Très Jolie among the equine stars!"