train?"

"Bright as a bird, sir; he never mind nothing. Mother o' Pearl she
worreted a little, he says; she always do, along of the engine noise,
but the King walked in and out just as if the station were his own
stable-yard."

"He gave them gruel and chilled water after the shaking before he let
them go to their corn?"

"He says he did, sir."

Rake would by no means take upon himself to warrant the veracity of
his sworn foe, the stud-groom; unremitting feud was between them; Rake
considered that he knew more about horses than any other man living, and
the other functionary proportionately resented back his knowledge and
his interference, as utterly out of place in a body-servant.

"Tell him I'll look in at the stable after duty and see the screws are
all right; and that he's to be ready to go down with them by my train
to-morrow--noon, you know. Send that note there, and the bracelets, to
St. John's Wood: and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid Willon
get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some of Wood's
double mouths and Nelson gags; we want new ones. Mind that lever-snap
breech-loader comes home in time. Look in at the Commission stables,
and if you see a likely black charger as good as Black Douglas, tell me.
Write about the stud fox-terrier, and buy the blue Dandy Dinmont; Lady
Guinevere wants him. I'll take him down with me, but first put me into
harness, Rake; it's getting late."

Murmuring which multiplicity of directions, for Rake to catch as he
could, in the softest and sleepiest of tones, Bertie Cecil drank a
glass of Curacoa, put his tall, lithe limbs indolently off his sofa, and
surrendered himself to the martyrdom of cuirass and gorget, standing six
feet one without his spurred jacks, but light-built and full of grace as
a deer, or his weight would not have been what it was in gentleman-rider
races from the Hunt steeple-chase at La Marche to the Grand National in
the Shires.

"As if Parliament couldn't meet without dragging us through the dust!
The idiots write about 'the swells in the Guards,' as if we had all fun
and no work, and knew nothing of the rough of the Service. I should like
to learn what they call sitting motionless in your saddle through half
a day, while a London mob goes mad round you, and lost dogs snap at your
charger's nose, and dirty little beggars squeeze against your legs, and
the sun broils you, or the fog soaks you, and you sit sentinel over a
ginge