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Updated: June 24, 2025
It was clear that she was going out. He noticed with surprise that her race-glasses were slung over her shoulders. "I came for the electric torch," she remarked. He rose and pocketed it. "Right," he said. "Whither away?" "I don't want you," she answered. "I'm coming along, though." "You can't," coldly. "Why not?" "I'm going spying." "Good," he answered cheerfully. She led out into the night.
"Hurrah for Ardan! Hurrah for Barbicane! Hurrah for Nicholl!" rose to the skies. Thousands of persons, noses in air, armed with telescopes and race-glasses, were questioning space, forgetting all contusions and emotions in the one idea of watching for the projectile. They looked in vain! It was no longer to be seen, and they were obliged to wait for telegrams from Long's Peak.
Whenever a Stoic appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside his fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he came to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly cut clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across him.
Little streets ascended the hillsides; no more trams, 'buses, too, had disappeared, and afoot the folk hurried along the lonely pavements of their suburbs. At Clapham Junction betting men had crowded the platform; they all wore grey overcoats with race-glasses slung over their shoulders. And the train still rolled through the brick wilderness which old John said was all country forty years ago.
All eyes were on that throng of the first mounts in the Service; brilliant glances by the hundred gleamed down behind hothouse bouquets of their chosen color, eager ones by the thousand stared thirstily from the crowded course, the roar of the Ring subsided for a second, a breathless attention and suspense succeeded it; the Guardsmen sat on their drags, or lounged near the ladies with their race-glasses ready, and their habitual expression of gentle and resigned weariness in nowise altered because the Household, all in all, had from sixty to seventy thousand on the event; and the Seraph murmured mournfully to his cheroot, "that chestnut's no end fit," strong as his faith was in the champion of the Brigades.
And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone, and up into those 'digs' on the first floor, with their little dark hall, their Van Beers' drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of racehorses, and of the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and stags'-horns, and hunting-whips.
At another part of the ground somebody had begun to tease her some young man, no doubt, in a long fashionable grey frock-coat with race-glasses hung round his neck, had ventured to tease this noble woman, to twit her, to jeer and jibe at her uncouthness, for she was uncouth, and she stood bearing with these jeers until they apologised to her.
So did Esther reason, and it reminded her of old times when he came back with his race-glasses slung round his shoulder. "Favourites all beaten today; what have you got for me to eat, old girl?" Esther forgot her dislike of racing in the joy of seeing her husband happy, if he'd only pick up a bit of flesh; but he seemed to get thinner and thinner, and his food didn't seem to do him any good.
Suddenly old John pleaded an appointment; he was to meet a friend who would give him the very latest news respecting a certain horse; and Esther, Sarah, and Journeyman wandered along the course in search of William. Along the rails strangely-dressed men stood on stools, satchels and race-glasses slung over their shoulders, great bouquets in their button-holes.
And his comrades of the Household, when they saw this through their race-glasses, broke through their serenity and burst into a cheer that echoed over the grasslands and the coppices like a clarion, the grand rich voice of the Seraph leading foremost and loudest a cheer that rolled mellow and triumphant down the cold, bright air like the blast of trumpets, and thrilled on Bertie's ear where he came down the course, a mile away.
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