"Were you successful in your search?" asked Burton imprudently.
"For what?" called out half a dozen.
"For the picturesque, of course," he replied. I breathed again.
"Yes, particularly successful." He smiled, and shrinking from the thought of my companions getting the slightest clue to his real meaning, especially in their present mood, I rose and bid them all good-night, having endured their Babel for more than two hours.
"And you will not sport even a pony on the Leger?"
"No, not a sixpence, I was bitten too severely at Ascot last spring."
"Never say die, you're not going to knock under to your luck that way?"
"I am, though, and I wish I could persuade you to do the same, Vavasour," said I, laughing, and laying my hand on the shoulder of an aristocratic looking stripling who had joined about six months before, and who coloured to the eyes at the idea of advice on prudence.
"Egerton is about to abjure the pomps and vanities of this wicked world," said one.