"But the thing has happened, Mr. Filbert?"
"Not so much as is talked about. Sometimes a likely foal is sent to a training stable, and cracked up as something wonderful. He is entered to run. On trial, he turns out to be next to nothing; and the backers, to save their reputation, put it about that the horse was played tricks with. There is hardly a great race, but you hear something about horses going amiss by foul play."
"Do many of these boys become jockeys?"
"Mostly. Some of them are jockeys already, and ride 'their own' horses as they call them. Here comes one."
A miniature man, with a horsewhip neatly twisted round the crop or handle, opens the gate.
"Well, Tommy, how are you, Tommy?"
"Well, sir, bobbish. Fine day, Mr. Filbert."
Although Mr. Filbert tells us in a whisper that Tommy is only twelve next birth-day, Tommy looks as if he had entered far into his teens. His dress is deceptive. Light trowsers terminating in buttons, laced shoes, long striped waistcoat, a cut-away coat, a colored cravat, a collar to which juveniles aspire under the name of "stick-ups," and a Paris silk hat, form his equipment.
"Let's see, Tommy; what stakes did you win last?"
Tommy flicks, with the end of his whip-crop, a speck of dirt from the toe of his "off" shoe, and replies carelessly, "The Great Northamptonshire upon Valentine. But then, I have won a many smaller stakes, you know, Mr. Filbert."