The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart was really a fine story. Fleetwood touched on it to Mr. Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman he could be, while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acquiescence in a romantic episode of the Ring, that kept the talk from the hotter theme.
'Money's Bank of England to-day, you think?' he interposed, and had his answer after Mallard had said:
'The girl 's rather good-looking, too.'
'You may double your bets, Chummy. I had the fellow to his tea at my dinner-table yesterday evening; locked him in his bedroom, and had him up and out for a morning spin at six. His trainer, Flipper's on the field, drove from Esslemont at nine, confident as trumps.'
'Deuce of a good-looking girl,' Potts could now afford to say; and he sang out: 'Feel fit, lucky dog?'
'Concert pitch!' was the declaration of Kit Ives.
'How about Lord Brailstone's man?'
'Female partner in a quadrille, sir.'
'Ah!' Potts doated on his limbs with a butcher's eye for prize joints.
'Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset,' Mallard observed.