'
'There isn't an honester man, or a man who understands a horse's
pace better in all England,' said Tifto.
'I won't have him standing alongside of me on the Heath,' said his
lordship.
'I don't know how I'm to help it.'
'If he's there I'll send the horse in;--that's all.' Then Tifto
found it best to say a few words to Captain Green. But the Captain
also said a few words to himself. 'D--- young fool; he don't know
what he's dropping into.' Which assertion, if you lay aside the
unnecessary expletive, was true to the letter. Lord Silverbridge
was a young fool, and did not at all know into what a mess he was
being dropped by the united experience, perspicuity, and energy of
the man whose company on the Heath he had declined.
The horse was quite a picture to look at. Mr Pook the trainer
assured his Lordship that for health and condition he had never
seen anything better. 'Stout all over,' said Mr Pook, 'and not an
ounce of what you may call flesh. And bright! just feel his coat,
my Lord! That's 'ealth,--that is; not dressing, nor yet macassar!'
And then there were various evidences produced of his pace,--how he
had beaten that horse, giving him two pounds, how he had been
beated by that, but only a mile course; the Leger distance was
just the thing for Prime Minister; how by a lucky chance that
marvellous quick rat of a thing that had won the Derby had not
been entered for the autumn race; how Coalheaver was known to have
bad feet.
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