Term had begun; ‘Jimmy’ was busy at his seat of custom. By some miracle of guardianly intervention, young Colquhoun had not gone broke. He was ‘up’ again, eager to retrieve his reputation, and that little brute ‘Jimmy’ would not lay against his horse! He merely sucked-in his cheeks, and answered: “I’m not layin’ my own ’orse.” It was felt that he was not the man he had been; assertion had come into his manner, he was better dressed. Someone had seen him at the station looking quite a ‘toff’ in a blue box-cloth coat standing well out from his wisp of a figure, and with a pair of brown race-glasses slung over the shoulder. Altogether the ‘little brute was getting too big for his boots.’
And this strange improvement hardened the feeling that his horse was a real good thing. Patriotism began to burn in Oxford. Here was a ‘snip’ that belonged to them, as it were, and the money in support of it, finding no outlet, began to ball.
A week before the race—with Calliope at nine to one, and very little doing—young Colquhoun went up to town, taking with him the accumulated support of betting Oxford. That evening she stood at sixes. Next day the public followed on.
George Pulcher took advantage. In this crisis of the proceedings he acted on his own initiative. The mare went back to eights, but the deed was done. He had laid off the whole bally lot, including the stake money. He put it to ‘Jimmy’ that evening in a nutshell.
“We pick up a thousand, and the Liverpool as good as in our pocket. I’ve done worse.”
‘Jimmy’ grunted out: “She could ’a won.”
“Not she. Jenning knows—and there’s others in the race. This Wasp is goin’ to take a lot of catchin’, and Deerstalker’s not out of it. He’s a hell of a horse, even with that weight.”
Again ‘Jimmy’ grunted, slowly sucking down his gin and bitters. Sullenly he said:
“Well, I don’ want to put money in the pocket of young ‘Cocoon’ and his crowd. Like his impudence, backin’ my horse as if it was his own.”