ty. I've been Captain of the
Eton Eight; but I didn't keep my crew on tea and toast. I fattened 'em
regularly three times a week on venison and champagne at Christopher's.
Very happy to feed yours, too, if you like; game comes down to me every
Friday from the Duke's moors; they look uncommonly as if they wanted
it!' You should have seen his face!--fatten the Eight! He didn't let me
do that, of course; but he was very glad of my oar in his rowlocks, and
I helped him beat Cambridge without training an hour myself, except so
far as rowing hard went."

And the Marquis of Rockingham, made thirsty by the recollection, dipped
his fair mustaches into a foaming seltzer.

"Quite right, Seraph!" said Cecil; "when a man comes up to the weights,
looking like a homunculus, after he's been getting every atom of flesh
off him like a jockey, he ought to be struck out for the stakes, to
my mind. 'Tisn't a question of riding, then, nor yet of pluck, or of
management; it's nothing but a question of pounds, and of who can stand
the tamest life the longest."

"Well, beneficial for one's morals, at any rate," suggested Sir Vere.

"Morals be hanged!" said Bertie, very immorally. "I'm glad you remind us
of them, Vere; you're such a quintessence of decorum and respectability
yourself! I say--anybody know anything of this fellow of the Tenth
that's to ride Trelawney's chestnut?"

"Jimmy Delmar! Oh, yes; I know Jimmy," answered Lord Cosmo Wentworth, of
the Scots Fusileers, from the far depths of an arm-chair. "Knew him at
Aldershot. Fine rider; give you a good bit of trouble, Beauty. Hasn't
been in England for years; troop been such a while at Calcutta. The
Fancy take to him rather; offering very freely on him this morning in
the village; and he's got a rare good thing in the chestnut."

"Not a doubt of it. The White Lily blood, out of that Irish mare
D'Orleans Diamonds, too."

"Never mind! Tenth won't beat us. The Household will win safe enough,
unless Forest King goes and breaks his back over Brixworth--eh, Beauty?"
said the Seraph, who believed devoutly in his comrade, with all the
loving loyalty characteristic of the House of Lyonnesse, that to
monarchs and to friends had often cost it very dear.

"You put your faith in the wrong quarter, Rock; I may fail you, he never
will," said Cecil, with ever so slight a dash of sadness in his words;
the thought crossed him of how boldly, how straightly, how gallantly
the horse always breasted an