“I dursn’t give him a mile,” answered Isaac, with an emphasis on the substantive which argued that he was open to persuasion for a shorter distance.
Mr. Tiptop regarded him attentively for several seconds, during which time he thought him first a flat, then the sharpest customer he had ever come across, and lastly an ignorant yokel and greenhorn once more.
“If you’ll chance it,” said he, “I’ll chance our mare. We might try them early to-morrow morning.”
Old Isaac pretended not to understand. Mr. Tiptop, with many flourishes, rose to explain.
“You go to exercise,” said he, “a little before it’s light, in the big close just outside the town. Put a fourteen-pound saddle on your nag; and don’t say nothing to nobody. I’ll be there in good time, just to give our mare a turn up the close. Nobody needn’t be a ha’porth the wiser. Once we know the rights of it exactly, we can do what we like. You’re game to the back-bone, old cock, I know! You won’t split!”
“But master’s going to hunt the bay horse to-morrow,” interposed Isaac, preserving his appearance of puzzled integrity with admirable composure.
“Never mind,” answered Mr. Tiptop: “you come all the same.” And, leering grimly at the tallow candle, Mr. Tiptop made his exit, and betook himself heavily to bed.
In the meantime, the hunting gentlemen, at their hotel, had been talking over the probabilities of getting up a steeple-chase, and the chances of the different horses and riders, whose merits they discussed with considerable freedom, and no small amount of that playful badinage which moderns term “chaff.”
Struggles, who rode over sixteen stone, was repeatedly entreated to enter, and cordially assured that he would carry all the money of the party; but Struggles, besides his enormous weight, was too good a sportsman to take pleasure in such a mongrel affair as a horse-race across a country.
“I’d sooner go to a badger-bait,” said he, “or a cockfight. I’d sooner hunt a cat in a kitchen, or a rat in a sewer. It’s neither one thing nor the other; and I’ll have nothing to do with it!” an announcement which was received with derisive cheers by his companions, amongst which Struggles calmly lit a fresh cigar, and filled his tumbler once more with brandy-and-soda.