"Plenty," was the prompt answer.
"Then you ought to do for me," Gage said. "Anyhow I should like to put something acceptable in your way. You've done me a service I shan't easily forget, and I hope you won't do anything to make me want to regret it. Now, will it suit your book to take a position on the Staplewick estate?"
"Just what I was after," replied the stranger in a curiously mechanical tone. He seemed strangely preoccupied, even apathetic, but Gage was not going just then to criticize too closely the man who had saved his life.
"Come along, then," he said.
The man seemed to rouse himself from a reverie, then laughed oddly. "Yes, I'll come," he agreed more briskly. "You shan't find fault with the way I look after my place."
"We'll talk it over as we go," said Gage, throwing the bridle over his arm and moving on.
"Full of fun and pretty surprises, the peerage," Gage observed to his friend later in the afternoon. "Makes one wonder what the next start is going to be."
"What's wrong now?" Peckover inquired with a laugh.
"Had a nasty spill, and nearly got sent to bye-bye just as the fun is beginning."
"Come off?"