“And there is some talk of a steeple-chase amongst these nobs, is there?” said Isaac, ordering at the same time a third call of “the flip,” and knocking the ashes from his pipe with an exceedingly horny finger.
“Talk of it! indeed there is,” answered Mr. Tiptop, whose face was beginning to redden with his potations. “And a precious exhibition it will be, too. Ride! There isn’t one of ’em as don’t believe he’s down to every move in the game; and I’d take that boy of yours—though he is but a boy, and not the best of hands, neither—and teach him to outride every man of ’em in a fortnight! Such a mess as they made of it last year! Blessed if I wasn’t quite ashamed of the Honourable, to see him rollin’ about in a striped jacket, like a zebra in convulsions! What’s the use getting a horse fit, when the man’s blown in three fields? But I don’t mind telling you, now,” added he, confidentially, and fixing his eyes on the tallow candle that stood between them—“I don’t mind telling you; for there’s money to be made of it. He’ll win it this year, if he’ll only sit still!”
“Win it, will he?” rejoined Isaac. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder, so as he comes in first. But it takes a smartish nag, Mr. Tiptop, to win a steeple-chase. Have you tried yours to beat everything in the town?”
“Well, I think I’ve the length of most on ’em,” answered Mr. Tiptop, smiling at the candle with a most reflective expression of countenance. “You’ve got a bay as might run up, if he was lucky. Why don’t you make your master put him in?”
“He’s as deep as a well, is my master,” answered old Isaac. “Nobody never knows what he’s up to. Bless you! I can’t help thinking as he must have bought the bay a-purpose for this here race: but I don’t know, no more than the dead; and I dursn’t ask him, neither.”
Mr. Tiptop reflected profoundly for several minutes, during which period Isaac’s countenance would have been a study for an artist who wished to represent a face totally devoid of thought. Then he asked—
“Have you ever tried the bay?”
“Never,” answered the senior, who piqued himself on his veracity. “Master brought him back from Stockbridge, last spring, pretty nigh done; and when I asked him what he’d been up to, he bid me mind my own business. The poor critter! he’d had a benefit, sure-lie!”
This was undoubtedly true, Marathon having turned restive at a cross-road on the occasion in question, and, after a quarter of an hour’s fight, given in, completely exhausted.
“If he can beat our mare a mile, at even weights, he’ll win it, as safe as safe!” observed Mr. Tiptop, now speaking very thick, and with a good deal of gravity.