60 The Pride of Our Village. 



jockey lean down for a moment and speak to the owner. 

 George gives him a shake of the rein, no whip or spur, and 

 our favourite passes us towards Tattenham Corner, going 

 possibly a little stiff. There is no mistake about it, the 

 match is our villa o^e aojainst the world. 



'' Call that a horse," shouted a man close to me, who was 

 eating some fat greasy meat out of a piece of Daily 

 Telegraph newspaper, w^ith a very doubtful knife, and hold- 

 ing in the palm of his left hand a dirty piece of bread, which 

 he gnawed like a dog, and whose mouth seemed filled with 

 equal proportions of teeth like broken rails (which had 

 never been washed by anything but beer since he was 

 weaned), the Litany utterly perverted, and the lowest tap- 

 room slang, j)lus his cold meat and bread ; "I call him (I 

 omit the adjectives and substantives of the speaker) a cow. 

 I'll lay a level ' quid ' (thieves' Latin for a sovereign) he 

 ain't first, second, or third." 



" Done ! " I shouted in his ear, with such a roar that the 

 man almost jumped off the stand ; and in my excitement I 

 called him by an epithet similar to one which Mr. Chucks 

 the boatswain in " Peter Simple," delighted in, which if 

 true — as no doubt it was — would have qualified him to 

 quarter the " bar sinister" on his escutcheon. 



" Halves ! " shouted the parson who was with me ; so I 

 and the Church were partners in a sovereign bet, which was 

 the only one w^e had. 



Again the favourite passes us on his return gallop to the 

 paddock, with a magnificent stride this time, utterly re- 

 gardless of mud or w^eather. I could have shaken hands 

 if I had had time, with every one near me, for I felt sure 

 that our favourite was the favourite of nine out of ten. 



A kind of sulky presence of mind came over me again, 

 and I watched with comparative indifference the horses file 

 out through the paddock to the post. 



