A short time after the Stiffshire were quartered in Manchester, and the Colonel one day encountered no less a person than Captain O'Rooney.
"See now, Colonel," said the latter, "you must bear me no ill-will. I did a shabby trick, I'll allow, at the wall, but I was a ruined man. I'm all right now. I've married a rich cotton-spinner's widow with some three thousand a year; but it's all settled on her."
Fortescue and Miss Gwynne are long ago married; and at the different race meetings that they attended they often saw the celebrated Captain O'Rooney performing; but in all the numerous races he was engaged in, he never rode—at any rate in a steeple-chase—another DEAD HEAT.
ONLY THE MARE
When one opens a suspicious-looking envelope and finds something about "Mr Shopley's respectful compliments" on the inside of the flap, the chances are that Mr Shopley is hungering for what we have Ovid's authority for terming irritamenta malorum. Not wishing to have my appetite for breakfast spoiled, I did not pursue my researches into a communication of this sort which was amongst my letters on a certain morning in November; but turned over the pile until the familiar caligraphy of Bertie Peyton caught my eye: for Bertie was Nellie's brother, and Nellie Peyton, it had been decided, would shortly cease to be Nellie Peyton; a transformation for which I was the person chiefly responsible. Bertie's communication was therefore seized with avidity. It ran as follows:—
"The Lodge, Holmesdale.
"My dear Charlie,
"I sincerely hope that you have no important engagements just at present, as I want you down here most particularly.
"You know that there was a small race-meeting at Bibury the other day. I rode over on Little Lady, and found a lot of the 14th Dragoons there; that conceited young person Blankney amongst the number. Now, although Blankley has a very considerable personal knowledge of the habits and manners of the ass, he doesn't know much about the horse; and for that reason he saw fit to read us a lecture on breeding and training, pointing his moral and adorning his tale with a reference to my mare—whose pedigree, you know, is above suspicion. After, however, he had kindly informed us what a thoroughbred horse ought to be, he looked at Little Lady and said, 'Now I shouldn't think that thing was thoroughbred!' It ended by my matching her against that great raw-boned chestnut of his: three and a half miles over the steeplechase course, to be run at the Holmesdale Meeting, on the 5th December.