On the second day, however, things looked a little more hopeful.
“She ate her grub last night and this morning middlin’ well, miss,” said Patsey, “and”—here he looked round stealthily and began to whisper—“when I had her in the ring, exercisin’, this morning, there was one that called me in to the rails; like a dealer he was. ‘Hi! grey mare!’ says he. I went in. ‘What’s your price?’ says he. ‘Sixty guineas, sir,’ says I. ‘Begin at the shillings and leave out the pounds!’ says he. He went away then, but I think he’s not done with me.”
“I’m sure the ring is our best chance, Patsey,” said Fanny, her voice thrilling with the ardour of conspiracy and of reawakened hope. “She doesn’t look so thin when she’s moving. I’ll go and stand by the rails, and I’ll call you in now and then just to make people look at her!”
“Sure I had Masther Freddy doing that to me yestherday,” said Patsey; but hope dies hard in an Irishman, and he saddled up with all speed.
For two long burning hours did the Connemara filly circle in Ring 3, and during all that time not once did her owner’s ears hear the longed-for summons, “Hi! grey mare!” It seemed to her that every other horse in the ring was called in to the rails, “and she doesn’t look so very thin to-day!” said Fanny indignantly to Captain Spicer, who, with Mr. Gunning, had come to take her away for lunch.
“Oh, you’ll see, you’ll sell her on the last day; she’s getting fitter every minute,” responded Captain Spicer. “What would you take for her?”
“I’m asking sixty,” said Fanny dubiously. “What would you take for her, Mr. Gunning—on the last day, you know?”
“I’d take a ticket for her,” said Rupert Gunning, “back to Craffroe—if you haven’t a return.”
The second and third days crawled by unmarked by any incident of cheer, but on the morning of the fourth, when Fanny arrived at the stall, she found that Patsey had already gone out to exercise. She hurried to the ring and signalled to him to come to her.
“There’s a fella’ afther her, miss!” said Patsey, bending very low and whispering at close and tobacco-scented range. “He came last night to buy her; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he said for me to be in the ring this morning. He’s not come yet. He had a straw hat on him.”