“Captain Spicer,” she said, as the party paced in deepest depression towards Ring 3, “if I hadn’t on a new veil I should cry!”
“Well, I haven’t,” replied Captain Spicer; “shall I do it for you? Upon my soul, I think the occasion demands it!”
“I just want to know one thing,” continued Miss Fitzroy. “When does your brother-in-law arrive?”
“Not till to-night.”
“That’s the only nice thing I’ve heard to-day,” sighed Fanny Fitz.
The judging went no better for the grey filly than might have been expected, even though she cheered up a little in the ring, and found herself equal to an invalidish but well-aimed kick at a fellow-competitor. She was ushered forth with the second batch of the rejected, her spirits sank to their former level, and Fanny’s accompanied them.
Perhaps the most trying feature of the affair was the reproving sympathy of her friends, a sympathy that was apt to break down into almost irrepressible laughter at the sight of the broken-down skeleton of whose prowess poor Fanny Fitz had so incautiously boasted.
“Y’ know, my dear child,” said one elderly M.F.H., “you had no business to send up an animal without the condition of a wire fence to the Dublin Show. Look at my horses! Fat as butter, every one of ’em!”
“So was mine, but it all melted away in the train,” protested Fanny Fitz in vain. Those of her friends who had only seen the mare in the catalogue sent dealers to buy her, and those who had seen her in the flesh—or what was left of it—sent amateurs; but all, dealers and the greenest of amateurs alike, entirely declined to think of buying her.
The weather was perfect; every one declared there never was a better show, and Fanny Fitz, in her newest and least-paid-for clothes, looked brilliantly successful, and declared to Mr. Rupert Gunning that nothing made a show so interesting as having something up for it. She even encouraged him to his accustomed jibes at her Connemara speculation, and personally conducted him to stall No. 548, and made merry over its melancholy occupant in a way that scandalised Patsey, and convinced Mrs. Spicer that Fanny’s pocket was even harder hit than she had feared.