Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue Light, is being stripped for Mr. Sawyer’s inspection. As a compliment to the stranger, he is further invited to “walk up to the mare, and feel how fit she is!” at the risk of having his brains dashed out; Boadicea, by Bellerophon out of Blue Light, resenting such liberties with the ferocity of her British namesake, and kicking with considerable energy when her ribs are tickled. Mr. Tiptop, by far too great a man to touch a rug or hood, gives his directions from the offing, with his hat very much over his eyes, removing it only when addressed by his master, his legs very wide apart, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his tight trousers.
Captain Struggles, a heavy gentleman, who rides light-weight horses, and wears a shooting suit of the broadest check fabricated, takes a straw out of his mouth, and observes, “That’s about the sort, I think, when you want to do the trick over this country. Ain’t it, Tiptop?”
Mr. Tiptop is always mysterious and oracular concerning the Honourable’s stud. Somebody, he thinks, ought to preserve the secrets of the stable, and Crasher himself is the most indiscreet of mortals on such subjects. So the groom raises his hat with both hands, puts it on again, and replies, “We like to get all of ours as nearly as possible about that mould. There’s a young horse as is quite one of your sort, Captain, in the next box.” Whereupon Mr. Sawyer, who had no patience with Tiptop, winks at Major Brush, and the latter bursts out laughing.
The conversation now becomes general, and not altogether devoid of personality.
“Your sort are rather of the weedy order, Struggles,” observes the Major. “Too light for this country, as you’ll find out before you’re many days older, now that we’ve got the ground to ride as it should do, up to our girths. Besides, those thorough-bred rips never have courage to face large fences. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Sawyer?”
The Major has not yet forgiven Struggles for stopping him on the last day they were out, at the only practicable place in a bullfinch, on which the heavy weight and a very little chestnut stallion were see-sawing backwards and forwards, like some exquisitely-balanced piece of machinery. Mr. Sawyer, thus appealed to, gives his opinion, thinking of the roan the while: “They must have power, I fancy, for these flying countries, but they must have blood too. I should like to show you a horse I’ve just bought, that I mean to hunt to-morrow if the frost goes. My stables are ‘close at hand.’”
It is resolved that Mr. Sawyer’s shall be the next stud inspected; but such an unheard-of breach of etiquette as leaving their present haunt until every individual horse has been stripped, cannot be entertained for a moment; so Mr. Savage, in his turn, enlivens the process by attacking poor Struggles: “You never got to the end that Keythorpe day, after all,” says he. “What’s the use of these long pedigrees of yours, if they can’t stay? I have always understood their only merit as hunters is, that you can’t tire the thoro’-bred ones. But confess now, Struggles, you stopped before the hounds ran through the Coplow!”
“No distance at all!” chimes in Brush.
“And the ground must have been quite light before the rain,” adds Mr. Sawyer, who thinks he must say something, and who has not been permitted to remain in ignorance of this Keythorpe day, now more than a fortnight old.
Struggles turned from one to the other of his tormentors, with a grin on his jolly face. “Little Benjamin couldn’t have been so beat, when I caught your horse for you,” said he to Brush; “or when I went by you, Savage, in the lane, and that was after five-and-twenty minutes, with fifteen stone on his back, amongst those hills. No, no, my boys! Fair play’s a jewel, and neither of you were there to see whether I’d had my gruel or not. Stop indeed! I’d lay odds none of old Catamaran’s stock would cut up soft, if you rode them till the day after to-morrow. Stop! I’ll be hanged if I didn’t trot when I got on the high-road coming home.”