“Delighted, quite!” was the reply, very much to Pratt’s disgust—the feeling of disgust being equally shared by Vanleigh, when he saw “that gloveless little humbug” get up to accompany them.
No matter what the feelings were that existed, they sent for a couple of cabs, and a few minutes after were being trundled down Piccadilly towards what is still known as “The Corner” where that noble animal the “’oss” is brought up and knocked down day by day, in every form and shape—horses with characters, and horses whose morals are bad; right up through park hacks and well-matched high steppers, greys, chestnuts, roans and bays, well-broken ladies’ steeds, good for a canter all day, to the very perfection of hunters up to any weight—equine princes of the blood royal, that have in their youth snuffed the keen air of the Yorkshire wolds; mares with retrousse noses and the saucy look given by a dash of Irish blood. Racers, too, are there, whose satin skins, netted with veins, throb with the blue blood that has come down from some desert sire, who has been wont in fleet career to tear up the sand of Araby like a whirlwind, spurn it behind his hoofs, and yet, at the lightest touch of the bit, check the lithe play of his elastic limbs at the opening of some camel or goat-hair tent, where half a dozen swarthy children are ready to play with it, and crawl uninjured about its feet—the mother busily the while preparing the baken cakes and mares-milk draught for her Bedouin lord.
First Encounters.
“Clean yer boots? Brush down, sir?”
“Why can’t yer leave the gent alone? I spoke fust, sir.”
“Here y’are, sir—out of the crowd, sir.”
Sixpence to be earned, and a scuffle for it, with the result that Richard Trevor stood a little out of the stream of passengers, stoically permitting a gentleman in an old red-sleeved waistcoat to “ciss-s-s” at him, as he brushed him most carefully down with an old brush, even though he was not in the slightest degree dusty.
“Now, look here, Dick, if I’m to go trotting about at your heels like a big dog, I shall bite at everybody who tries to rob you. I shan’t stand by and see you fleeced. Is there something in salt water that makes you sailors ready to part with your money to the first comer?”
The speaker was Frank Pratt, as he drew his friend away towards one of the omnibuses running that day from Broxford Station to where a regular back and heart-breaking bit of country had been flagged over for a steeplechase course.