She felt completely out of it as the three sat talking horses, and had leisure to note the eager look on Gay's face as she listened to what Carlton was saying, also to digest the fact that this Trotting fad would bring her cousin and Mackrell more together than ever.
"Both your horses are timed to do two minutes thirty seconds," said Mackrell presently, "and upon that form they will be handicapped on Monday. I think—at least, 'Brusher' tells me—that Silver Streak had improved on that time in private, but he has always been 'just beaten' lately, so they may put him on a few yards closer mark next time he runs. When a horse is entered for a Trotting race, you know," he explained, "the owner has to supply the handicappers with his best time for a mile on a track."
"What's to stop a man representing his horse as being able to do two minutes thirty seconds when he knows he can do it in less?" inquired Chris, for his experience of the Turf had made him familiar with most of the dodges for throwing dust in the handicappers' eyes, with a view to getting dropped a few pounds in the scale. "You can't get weight off in the stable," was a dictum he often heard, but never practised.
"Well, for one thing," Mackrell replied, "the officials generally like to see a horse do his time before they frame their handicap, to prevent mistakes, you know," and he laughed. "For another, if a horse improves appreciably on his entered time, the 'man in the box,' as they call him, wants to know something about it, though, of course, a few seconds faster might be owing to a good track and good going. On the other hand, if a horse does not trot up to his time, they can, if they like, put up their official driver to take him round as fast as he can make him go. If the discrepancy is considerable, the scheming owner will probably find himself suspended for a few months, or even warned off."
"But," said Chris, who at heart deeply resented Mackrell's encouraging Gay in her misguided fancy, "when such men as Rensslaer and Vancouver and that ilk, all hold aloof from the sport as understood in England, what chance has it of becoming a national sport? The trotting tracks here are so bad that it is really kinder not to enumerate them; most are in connection with public-houses, and the people who frequent them are the middle class. Trotting, in short, is the sport of that and the lower classes, and they trot cheap horses in consequence."
"Unfortunately," said Mackrell, with a slightly heightened colour, for he got fearfully chaffed among his own set for his bizarre taste, "the upper classes take no interest in Trotting in England. It will take time to prove to them that a trotter is not necessarily a butcher's horse, but can vie with a hackney and swell carriage horse, and is almost as fast as a motor car as well, thus combining the horse and motor in one animal. Of course we all know that in America the trotter is the National horse, as the thoroughbred is the English one."
Chris was silent. He thought that Mackrell understood trotting, or rather mixed trotting and pacing, as practised in England, but knew nothing of the higher art of trotting, that is to say, real first-class trotting with horses worth money, and which could go in 2.8 or better—like the famous Rensslaer's, for example.
"Are you really going to keep Trotters, Gay?" Lossie cut in sharply.
"Rather! and I'm going to train at Flytton. Inigo Court's close by, you know, and I shall love seeing my horses jog in the morning. They'll let me do that, I suppose?" she asked Carlton Mackrell, and pointedly turning her back on Chris.
"Oh, certainly," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, and much to the disgust of the Professor, who considered that all this horsey talk was more suitable for stables than a drawing-room. He did hope Gay would not become one of those horrid, slangy, racing-women he abominated; almost unconsciously he exchanged a glance with Lossie, who flashed back one of sympathy, for jealousy and envy of Gay corroded her.