Boy made a cursory inspection of the pony's mouth.
"Eleven off," she said.
"That's too old to play polo."
She believed it to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an authority on the game to justify her in saying so.
"Anyway, I'm getting too heavy for him," Silver went on. "Joint too big for the dish, as they say. That fellow's more my sort, ain't you, old lad?" He nodded to the next loose-box, where his seventeen-hand hunter, Banjo, stood, blowing at them through the bars. "What Heart of Oak wants is a nice light weight just to hack him about the Downs and ease him down into the grave."
That evening after supper Jim Silver sang.
Apart from the members of the Eton Mission Clubs there were perhaps a dozen men in the world—Eton men all, boating men most—who knew that he did "perform," to use their expression; and just two women—Boy Woodburn and her mother. Old Mat, to be sure, did not count, for he always slept through the "performance."
The young man's repertoire consisted of two songs—The Place Where the Old Horse Died and My Old Dutch.
With a good natural voice, entirely untrained, he sang with a deep and quiet feeling that made his friends affirm that once you had heard Silver Mug's—
We've been together now for forty years,
And it don't seem a day too much,
There ain't a lady livin' in the land
As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch.