"He wants you to go down to Elsinore," said Gay. "Oh, Chris, the peace of that great quadrangle—the luxury of those stables that yet compass the most perfect simplicity of service to those beautiful creatures—you'll be like a boy in a sweet-shop, running about from one joy to another and loth to leave any. To run through his hundred or so of horses, will take you approximately, I should say, a year of undulterated bliss!"
"I don't know that his stable will interest me so much," objected Chris. "You see, he doesn't go in for steeplechasing—it's driving he's great at."
"Why, he loves his horses," cried Gay indignantly. "It's his humanising influence in the stable—loving the dear beasts, not for what they do, and the money to be made out of them, but for what they are—that's so lovely."
Chris sighed. To love horses, and live among the world's pick of them as Rensslaer did, was a lot that the most fortunate man alive might envy.
"Chris?"
"Yes?"
"Aunt Lavinia has been a great comfort to me while you were laid up." Chris smiled—it was a sign of grace in her that she had need of comforting.
"I didn't know till she told me—how—how charitable you are. No wonder you're always hard up, when you give away most of your winnings in helping poor, wretched people!"
Chris coloured.
"I don't," he said. "Aunt Lavinia has been pulling your leg."