“If you please, your Grace,” then said this prudent person, “the cob as is called Cuckoopint is down at Market Harborough, in Lord Brancepeth’s box there.”
“He did buy him, then?”
“Yessir.”
“And he—Harry?”
“His lordship, sir, went to the South Pole the summer before last with Lord Tenby and Sir Francis Yorke and two other gentlemen; his lordship have left the Service altogether, sir.”
“Left the Guards!”
Jack was dumbfounded. He had always been so pleased to see Harry riding down Portland Place or Kensington Road with all those beautiful horses and cuirasses and jackboots.
“Where’s the South Pole?” he asked piteously. Of the North Pole he had heard.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Philips, much bored; he had had enough of a subject which only brought him in four half-crowns.
Jack had to wait till his ride was over and he could go in the house and get down his atlas and look for the South Pole; he did not make the position out to his satisfaction in the atlas and he turned to the terrestrial globe; then indeed he realized how many weary leagues divided him from his friend. He leaned on the great globe and put his head down on it and cried bitterly. Oh, how he hated his mother! It was his mother who had sent Harry away!