"A bad job indeed!" said one.
"A great race entirely!" added another. "Run fairly out from end to end, and only a neck between first and second at the finish!"
"I wish I'd taken old Sullivan's advice," moaned a third; "or backed the mare for a place, annyhow."
"Ye might have been wrong even then, me boy," interrupted a jolly, red-faced gentleman, "unless ye squared the ould woman! I wonder would she take three half-crowns a day to come with me twice a year to the Curragh?"
"I knew of the mare's trial," drawled one of the London dandies, "and backed her to win me a monkey. Daisy put me on at once, like a trump. It was a real good thing and it has boiled over. (Champagne, please.) Such is life, Miss Douglas. We have no hope of getting home now till Epsom Spring."
Miss Douglas, not the least to his discomfiture, stared him scornfully in the face without reply.
"I'm afraid it's a severe blow to young Walters," observed the General. "They tell me he has lost a good deal more than he can afford."
"Got it, I fancy, very hot!" said the dandy. "Gad, he rode as if he'd backed his mount. I thought his finish one of the best I ever saw."
Norah Macormac threw him the sweetest of glances, and wondered why she had considered him so very uninteresting till now.