"Both of 'em amateurs," added Holworthy, "and neither knowing what he is talking about."
"Two to one on the poet, though," said Randolph. "He is always in earnest, anyway."
"Shake hands, gents," said Rattleton, getting interested. "Time."
"Now just listen to me," said Dick, tilting back his chair and waving his fork pedantically. "I'll give you a really accurate picture of your dear days of chivalry, such as you never got out of a romance."
"Silence for Sir Walter Stoughton's account of a tourney," commanded Burleigh. "Steve Hudson, pull that pup of yours off the table; she'll upset the milk pitcher."
"I have just been reading all about that sort of game," interrupted Rattleton. "Seems to me they were a most unsporting lot. They had no classes or handicaps; just lumped 'em all in together, feather-weights and heavy-weights. No idea of a fair thing."
"Shut up your childish prattle, Jack," commanded Burleigh. "If you will push your researches far enough you will find that the little fellows always won. The giants invariably got the heads smote off 'em. We are not on the brutal subject of prize-fighting, we are on chivalry. You know nothing about that, so keep quiet and let Dick go on."
"I suppose you have an idea," Stoughton went on, "that every interesting young gentleman who entered the lists was a sure winner, and then all he had to do was to crown the heroine as Queen of Love and Beauty and live happily ever afterwards. Now of course that wasn't so. Some one had to get thrashed, and most young knights probably occupied that position for the first ten years or so of their career. Take an individual case; Sir Ernest Gray, bent on winning glory for Dulcinea, looks over the sporting calendar and enters himself for every big field-meeting during the season. He bears himself right bravely in them all, but gets stood on his head with great regularity; in fact Dulcinea gets a little tired of watching his performance. Nevertheless she goes to the crack meeting of Ashby de la Zouche, to see Gray try again.
"This tourney is carried off with great ease by an old hand, Sir Thomas de Mainfort, who, having been separated from his third wife on the ground of brutal treatment, is not doing any love-proving with his lance. He is simply a mug hunter; he is in for the white Barbary steed, and the other fellows' armor."
"Gate money?" broke in Rattleton interrogatively.