In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full warmth of a penitent Irishman.
V
For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still, over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race. Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.
His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer—there the inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete—he had not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
“How's the mare doing, Andy?” he asked. “What did the race do to her?”
“She never was better in her life,” the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, “She'll win next time out, sir—I'll gamble my shirt on that.”
“Not with another McKay up.”
“I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.”
“What's the use,” said Porter, dejectedly; “where'll we get a boy?”