Will waved the glass away.
“Would you like to send your daughter bargaining among a lot of rough men?”
Tony grinned. “I don’t think Polly ’ud mind the men. It’s the horse she’d come a cropper over. Jinny’s had a long experiance of horses, and she’s smart enough to buy anything. If I wanted the moon, she’d get it for me—and cheap too!”
“And why can’t you buy your own horses?”
“Why? Because I’m a child of nature—a simple player—who wears his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at. My last mare crocked up in a week in the flower of her youth—seems to have been bought in a knacker’s yard, shaved and singed and brushed and combed till she was as shiny as a Derby winner. They gingered her ears and jaws and cayenne-peppered her nostrils till she seemed clothed in thunder, like the war-horse in the Bible.”
Will smiled despite himself. “And you expect a girl to see through all that! Look here, I’ll buy your horse.”
Mr. Flippance paused in the act of imbibing. “Oh, there we are,” he said, looking shrewd. “Want to cut out Jinny’s business!”
Will’s cheeks became chromatically indistinguishable from his hair.
“Me! Do you think I want your dirty commission?”
“And do you think I want your stinking horse? Why the devil do you come interfering?”