“Good morning, Grady;” and Frank rode back towards Handicap Lodge.
He had a great contest with himself on his road home. He had hated the horses two days since, when he was at Grey Abbey, and had hated himself, for having become their possessor; and now he couldn’t bear the thought of parting with them. To be steward of the Curragh—to own the best horse of the year—and to win the Derby, were very pleasant things in themselves; and for what was he going to give over all this glory, pleasure and profit, to another? To please a girl who had rejected him, even jilted him, and to appease an old earl who had already turned him out of his house! No, he wouldn’t do it. By the time that he was half a mile from Igoe’s stables he had determined that, as the girl was gone it would be a pity to throw the horses after her; he would finish this year on the turf; and then, if Fanny Wyndham was still her own mistress after Christmas, he would again ask her her mind. “If she’s a girl of spirit,” he said to himself—“and nobody knows better than I do that she is, she won’t like me the worse for having shown that I’m not to be led by the nose by a pompous old fool like Lord Cashel,” and he rode on, fortifying himself in this resolution, for the second half mile. “But what the deuce should he do about money?” There was only one more half mile before he was again at Handicap Lodge.—Guinness’s people had his title-deeds, and he knew he had twelve hundred a year after paying the interest of the old incumbrances. They hadn’t advanced him much since he came of age; certainly not above five thousand pounds; and it surely was very hard he could not get five or six hundred pounds when he wanted it so much; it was very hard that he shouldn’t be able to do what he liked with his own, like the Duke of Newcastle. However, the money must be had: he must pay Blake and Tierney the balance of what they had won at whist, and the horse couldn’t go over the water till the wind was raised. If he was driven very hard he might get something from Martin Kelly. These unpleasant cogitations brought him over the third half mile, and he rode through the gate of Handicap Lodge in a desperate state of indecision.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Dot,” he said, when he met his friend coming in from his morning’s work; “and I’m deuced sorry to do it, for I shall be giving you the best horse of his year, and something tells me he’ll win the Derby.”
“I suppose ‘something’ means old Jack Igoe, or that blackguard Grady,” said Dot. “But as to his winning, that’s as it may be. You know the chances are sixteen to one he won’t.”
“Upon my honour I don’t think they are.”
“Will you take twelve to one?”
“Ah! youk now, Dot, I’m not now wanting to bet on the horse with you. I was only saying that I’ve a kind of inward conviction that he will win.”
“My dear Frank,” said the other, “if men selling horses could also sell their inward convictions with them, what a lot of articles of that description there would be in the market! But what were you going to say you’d do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll agree to your terms providing you’ll pay half the expenses of the horses since the last race each of them ran. You must see that would be only fair, supposing the horses belonged to you, equally with me, ever since that time.”
“It would be quite fair, no doubt, if I agreed to it: it would be quite fair also if I agreed to give you five hundred pounds; but I will do neither one nor the other.”