Martin’s blood was fired by the contest. He was essentially a boy foredoomed to dominate his fellows, whether for good or evil. He pitched restraint to the winds. He could throw better than either of the young aristocrats; he could shoot straighter at the galleries; he could describe the heroic combat between the boxer and Velveteens; he would swing Angèle higher than any, until they looked over the crossbar after each giddy swirl.
The Beckett-Smythes kept pace with him only in expenditure, Jim Bates being quickly drained, and even they wondered how long the village lad could last.
The ten shillings were soon dissipated.
“I want that sovereign,” he shouted, when Angèle and he were riding together again on the hobby-horses.
“I told you so,” she screamed. She turned up her dress to extricate the money from a fold of her stocking. The light flashed on her white skin, and Frank Beckett-Smythe, who rode behind with one of the Atkinson girls, wondered what she was doing.
She bent over Martin and whispered:
“There are two! Keep the fun going!”
The young spark in the rear thought that she was kissing Martin; he was wild with jealousy. At the next show—that of a woman grossly fat, who allowed the gapers to pinch her leg at a penny a pinch—he paid with his last half-crown. When they went to refresh themselves on ginger-beer, Martin produced a sovereign. The woman who owned the stall bit it, surveyed him suspiciously, and tried to swindle him in the change. She failed badly.
“Eleven bottles at twopence and eleven cakes at a penny make two-and-nine. I want two more shillings, please,” he said coolly.
“Be aff wid ye! I gev ye seventeen and thruppence. If ye thry anny uv yer tricks an me I’ll be afther askin’ where ye got the pound.”