Fenwick laughed aloud. It was a great big laugh, that made Rosalind, who was giving directions in the kitchen, just across the passage, call out to know what they were laughing at.
"I'll be hanged if I know," said he, "why I said fruit-farming—I must have had something to do with it. It's all very odd."
"But the horses—the horses," said Sally, who did not want him to wander from the point. "How should you go about it? Should you walk into Tattersall's without a character, and ask for a place?"
"Not a bit of it! I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and ask them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious quadruped they could find in an hour."
"But that would be fibs."
"Oh no! I could do it. But I don't know why I know...."
"I didn't mean that. I meant you wouldn't have laid the wager."
"Yes, I should. I lay it you now! Come, Miss Sally!—a hundred pounds to a brass farthing I knock all the vice out of the worst beast they can find in an hour. I shouldn't say the wager had been accepted, you know."
"Well, anyhow, I shan't accept it. You haven't got a hundred pounds to pay with. To be sure, I haven't got a brass farthing that I know of. It's as broad as it is long."