on
meditatively, eyeing his charge, the King, with remorseful glances.

"Prut-tush-tish!" said his companion, with a whistle in his teeth that
ended with a "damnation!" "It'll only knock him over for the race; he'll
be right as a trivet after it. What's your little game; coming it soft
like that, all of a sudden? You hate that ere young swell like p'ison."

"Aye," assented the head groom with a tigerish energy, viciously
consuming his bit of straw. "What for am I--head groom come nigh twenty
years; and to Markisses and Wiscounts afore him--put aside in that ere
way for a fellow as he's took into his service out of the dregs of a
regiment; what was tied up at the triangles and branded D, as I know on,
and sore suspected of even worse games than that, and now is that set
up with pride and sich-like that nobody's woice ain't heard here except
his; I say what am I called on to bear it for?": and the head groom's
tones grew hoarse and vehement, roaring louder under his injuries. "A
man what's attended a Duke's 'osses ever since he was a shaver, to be
put aside for that workhus blackguard! A 'oss had a cold--it's Rake
what's to cure him. A 'oss is entered for a race--it's Rake what's to
order his morning gallops, and his go-downs o' water. It's past bearing
to have a rascally chap what's been and gone and turned walet, set up
over one's head in one's own establishment, and let to ride the high
'oss over one, roughshod like that!"

And Mr. 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.

"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.

"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 ba