Allys gave him a long look. “Then you must take Heathflower,” she said. “I have the Wickliffe boy’s word for it—he wrote me only yesterday: ‘Miss Allys, if you want to get wealthy, bet all your real money on that Heathflower thing.’”
“H’m! Who is the Wickliffe boy? Tell us that before we play his tip,” Adair demanded. Hilary could not speak for laughing.
Allys smiled entrancingly. “The Wickliffe boy—is a knight-errant born out of time,” she said. “I’m wondering if it will last. We came to know him last summer—mother and I—down at Hollymount, my uncle’s place in Virginia. The Wickliffe boy, Billy by name, lives at Lyonesse, which is Hollymount’s next neighbor. It belongs to Billy’s uncle, the dearest old bachelor—maybe that is the reason the boy has such reverence for womankind. I don’t know which he comes nearest worshiping—women or horses. Whenever we rode out—he was my steadfast gallant—he managed somehow to pass through or by or around Haw Bush, where the Heathflower thing was bred. Old Major Mediwether, her owner, is Billy’s best chum. They match beautifully—though the major is nearly eighty, and Billy just my age—rising nineteen.”
“They must have made it interesting for you. I’m sure you couldn’t tell half so much about either of us,” Adair said, with a deeply injured air.
Allys shook her head at him. “They are dears,” she said, emphatically. “And they taught me a lot I should never have known—about horses and men.”
“Anything specific—as about the Heathflower thing?” Hilary asked, affecting to speak with awe.
Allys nodded. “A heap,” she said. “I can hear Billy now, as we watched her on the training track, saying: ‘She hasn’t got any looks—but legs are better for winnin’. And she must win; she’s bound to—whenever she feels like it, and the track and the weights suit her. She can’t help it—she’s got eight full crosses of Blink Bonny blood.’”
“Blink Bonny! H’m! Who was he? What did he do?” Hilary asked.
Allys looked at him severely. “‘He’ happens to have been ‘she,’” she said. “As for the doing, it was only winning the Derby, with the Oaks right on top of it. Mighty few mares have ever done that—as you would know if you had grown up in Virginia, with time to know everything. Billy does know everything about pedigrees—he can reel them off at least a hundred years back. Remember, now, I’m strictly quoting him: ‘Blink Bonny is really ancient history—she won the year poor old Dick Ten Broek tried so hard to have his American-bred ones carry off the blue ribbon of the turf. He didn’t win it—no American did—until one of them had luck enough to try for it with something of Blink Bonny’s blood. Iroquois went back to her through his sire, Bonnie Scotland-Iroquois, who wasn’t really a great horse, but a good one that happened on a great chance.’”
“Why, Allys darling, I can hardly believe my ears! Here you are talking horse like a veteran, when I always thought you didn’t know a fetlock from a wishbone,” the Hammond girl cooed, swimming up behind them on old Van Ammerer’s arm. They were headed for the paddock, although it was not quite time for the saddling bell. The Heathflower thing was still invisible—Allys searched the course for her through Hilary’s glass, saying the while over her shoulder, with her most infantine smile: “You thought right, Camilla dear. I don’t really know anything—have only a parrot faculty of repeating what I hear.”