The stud-groom was well aware that no confidential communication could take place during that meal, disturbed as it usually was by the arrival of other late starters, dropping in, to hurry their friend.
“Come in,” gurgled the Honourable: and his stud-groom made his appearance, smoothing his shiny head as all grooms do.
“What’s the matter, Tiptop?” inquired his master, poising the tooth-brush between finger and thumb. “Are all the horses lame?”
“Not so bad as that, sir,” answered Tiptop, respectfully, revolving in his mind how he should begin what he had to say. For all his languor, there was something about Crasher that made people very loath to take a liberty. “I only wanted to tell you, sir, of a horse I’ve seen as you ought to buy. I thought I’d make bold to tell you before any of the other gentlemen got word of him. He’s a flyer, sir—that’s what he is!”
Now, in all matters relating to the stable, Mr. Tiptop ruled paramount, the Honourable’s system being to make his groom look out for horses, and if he liked their appearance himself, to buy them at once. With regard to riding, I have already said, he could make them all go, if they had any pretensions to hunters about them.
“Whose is he?” was the next question asked; for the Honourable was now finishing his toilet in such a hurry as would have made you suppose he never was late in his life.
“Mr. Sawyer’s, sir,” answered Tiptop. “It’s the bay. He’ll be on him to-day at Barkby Holt.”
“Very well,” answered the Honourable, buttoning on a watch-chain, with half-a-dozen lockets attached, as he emerged from his room. “Tell Smiles to get breakfast directly, and send the hack round in ten minutes!”
Mr. Tiptop looked after him admiringly, as he clanked downstairs. “He means business this morning,” thought the groom, “and I’ll lay a new hat he buys the bay horse!”
Now if Mr. Tiptop had felt he had the best of the morning trial, it had been his intention to pull his horse back, and gammon his friend Isaac that he was beat, with the laudable determination to get the better of that worthy, as well as of the general public, by making good use of his knowledge previous to the race. When, however, he found that her antagonist had the heels of Chance, whom he had already tried with the other grooms to be quite the best in the town, he altered his tactics altogether. Obviously they ought to have both the flyers in the same stable; and it would be wiser to stand in with Isaac, and make the old groom a sharer in the profits, as he was already in the information which their early rising had enabled them to obtain. Mr. Tiptop forgot that it is as dark before dawn as it is after nightfall. He might, perhaps, have been farther enlightened, had he, instead of waiting at his master’s door till the Honourable’s teeth had been polished to the required degree of whiteness, been able to assist at an interview which took place at the same hour between Isaac and his master, in a room where the latter had just finished breakfast.