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"It's almost a pity he's in such perfect condition. Tip-top. Cool as a cucumber after the longest pipe-opener; licks his oats up to the last grain; leads the whole string such a rattling spin as never was spun but by a Derby cracker before him. It's almost a pity," said Willon meditatively, eyeing his charge, the King, with remorseful glances.
Willon, in his disgust at the equestrian contumely thus heaped on him, bit the straw savagely in two, and made an end of it, with a vindictive "Will yer be quiet there; blow yer," to the King, who was protesting with his heels against the conversation. "Come, then, no gammon," growled his companion the "cousin out o' Yorkshire" of the keeper's tree.
I've seen his face, too, somewhere; where the deuce was it? Cousin; yes, cousins in Queer Street, I dare say! Why should he go and meet his 'cousin' out in the fog there, when, if you took twenty cousins home to the servants' hall, nobody'd ever say anything? If that Willon ain't as deep as Old Harry "
"The deuce!" he thought, as he settled himself in his stirrups, while the raw morning wind tossed his white plume hither and thither. "I never remembered! I don't believe I've left myself money enough to take Willon and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow. If I shouldn't have kept enough to take my own ticket with! that would be no end of a sell.
"Two thousand to nothing come!" reiterated the other, with his arms folded to intimate that this and nothing else was the figure to which he would bind himself. Willon chewed another bit of straw, glanced at the horse as though he were a human thing to hear, to witness, and to judge, grew a little pale; and stooped forward. "Hush! Somebody'll spy on us. It's a bargain." "Done!
Men could make nothing of it save the fact that there was "something dark" somewhere. The "painted quid" had done its work more thoroughly than Willon and the welsher had intended; they had meant that the opiate should be just sufficient to make the favorite off his speed, but not to make effects so palpable as these.
"I ain't afraid of going to grass, if you are!" retorted Rake scornfully; boldness was not his enemy's strong point. "Who's your pal, old fellow?" "A cousin o' mine, out o' Yorkshire," vouchsafed Mr. Willon, looking anything but easy, while the cousin aforesaid nodded sulkily on the introduction.
"Goes beyond it, the ladies say; and to do them justice they favor it much the most," laughed Cecil to himself, floating fresh clouds of Turkish about him. "Willon up?" "Yes, sir. Come in this minute for orders." "How'd Forest King stand the train?" "Bright as a bird, sir; he never mind nothing.
That blessed King hates the man; how he lashes his heels at him!" It was certainly possible that Willon might be passing an idle hour in potting rabbits, or be otherwise innocently engaged enough; but the sight of him, there among the gorse, was a sight of suspicion to Rake.
"What's yer figure, you say?" relented Willon meditatively. "Two thousand to nothing come! can't no handsomer," retorted the Yorkshire cousin, with the air of a man conscious of behaving very nobly. "For the race in Germany?" pursued Mr. Willon, still meditatively.
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