56 SPORTING REMINISCENCES 



Bond Street, and the Indian Princes, especially 

 on horseback, were people to remember. 



They seemed actually part of their fiery Arabs. 

 One came to a cricket match where I was staying 

 at Windsor. He was high breeding impersonified. 

 I remember he wore black kid gloves and would 

 not eat anything at tea, and he moved more like 

 a thoroughbred racer than anything else. 



He used to talk a good deal to an English girl, 

 and they were so typical of East and West. She 

 showed as much high breeding as he did ; a tall 

 fair girl, rather pale and with finely cut features, 

 and he taller stiU, handsome in his Eastern type. 



It was a summer of sunshine and splendour cut 

 across with its thunderstorm of gloom and anxiety. 



Ascot that year was a medley of colour and 

 display, with the Indians in their Indian kits, 

 Chinese, Japanese, French, Germans, a babel of 

 tongues and a positive glory of colour. One really 

 seemed to absorb riches from other people and 

 forget one's own small place in the world. 



After this I came back to Ireland to hunt 

 regularly again, on anything which I could pick 

 up to ride. I was writing hard, but my first book 

 only brought me in £io ; it makes far more yearly 

 now, and my next was a dead failure, so a few 

 short stories were all I had to help then. 



I wonder if other people who write were as 

 overjoyed as I was when I won the prize offered 

 in a Dublin paper for the best short sporting story. I 



