"Of course," said Cox. "If you must give up hunting, do it at the end of the season, not at the beginning. There's a time for all things. Ring the bell, Dormouse, and we'll have another bottle of claret before we go to dummy."
"If I stay here for the winter," said Ralph, "I should want another horse. Though I might, perhaps, get through with four."
"Of course you might," said Pepper, who never spoilt his own market by pressing.
"I'd rather give up altogether than do it in a scratch way," said Ralph. "I've got into a fashion of having a second horse, and I like it."
"It's the greatest luxury in the world," said Cox.
"I never tried it," said Pepper; "I'm only too happy to get one." It was admitted by all men that Fred Pepper had the art of riding his horses without tiring them.
They played their rubber of whist and had a little hot whisky and water. On this evening Mr. Horsball was admitted to their company and made a fourth. But he wouldn't bet. Shilling points, he said, were quite as much as he could afford. Through the whole evening they went on talking of the next season, of the absolute folly of giving up one thing before another was begun, and of the merits of Fred Pepper's little horse. "A clever little animal, Mr. Pepper," said the great man, "a very clever little animal; but I wish you wouldn't bring so many clever un's down here, Mr. Pepper."
"Why not, Horsball?" asked Cox.
"Because he interferes with my trade," said Mr. Horsball, laughing. It was supposed, nevertheless, that Mr. Horsball and Mr. Pepper quite understood each other. Before the evening was over, a price had been fixed, and Ralph had bought the little horse for £130. Why shouldn't he take another winter out of himself? He could not marry Mary Bonner and get into a farm all in a day,—nor yet all in a month. He would go to work honestly with the view of settling himself; but let him be as honest about it as he might, his winter's hunting would not interfere with him. So at last he assured himself. And then he had another argument strong in his favour. He might hunt all the winter and yet have this thirty thousand pounds,—nay, more than thirty thousand pounds at the end of it. In fact, imprudent and foolish as had been his hunting in all previous winters, there would not even be any imprudence in this winter's hunting. Fortified by all these unanswerable arguments he did buy Mr. Fred Pepper's little horse.
On the next morning, the morning of the day on which he was to return to town, the arguments did not seem to be so irresistible, and he almost regretted what he had done. It was not that he would be ruined by another six months' fling at life. Situated as he now was so much might be allowed to him almost without injury. But then how can a man trust in his own resolutions before he has begun to keep them,—when, at the very moment of beginning, he throws them to the winds for the present, postponing everything for another hour? He knew as well as any one could tell him that he was proving himself to be unfit for that new life which he was proposing to himself. When one man is wise and another foolish, the foolish man knows generally as well as does the wise man in what lies wisdom and in what folly. And the temptation often is very slight. Ralph Newton had hardly wished to buy Mr. Pepper's little horse. The balance of desire during the whole evening had lain altogether on the other side. But there had come a moment in which he had yielded, and that moment governed all the other minutes. We may almost say that a man is only as strong as his weakest moment.