THE PROFIT AND LOSS. 6 



sport indeed^ I'm told, sir. Got the bill in tlie bar, sir; 

 perhaps you'd like to see it ?'' 



And away g'oes the waiter, and back he comes again 

 with what he calls '' the bill of sport" in one hand, and 

 the Tally-ho sauce in the other. Shows what it is to be 

 a sportsman ; how the pride will out, and the propensity 

 ■ — as a bill of another sort will no doubt tell us to-morrow 

 morning — suffer for it. Sportsmen hold a very high, 

 liberal kind of character ; and landlords always do their 

 part to make them work up to it. 



But to g-et back to my individual propensity — the bit 

 of plating" — the start for which was hardly as g-ood as I 

 had counted on. Two legs — or rather, to be correct, as 

 he'd only three when w^e '^ claimed " liim — a leg- and a 

 lialf on the sly in a hurdle jumper was the way it broke 

 out. " To pay half the expenses and have half the 

 profits" — with that most sagacious insertion ^' if any " — 

 was the agreement ; to pay all the expenses, and have no 

 profits, more like my actual part in it. The Co. in the 

 concern, who managed, trained, and rode " Darino* 

 Eanger " himself, had got a name for doing things rather 

 close ', a vulgar notion vrhich our ^' account," I must say, 

 did much to belie. Everything*, from weig'hts and scales, 

 to boots and chambermaid, had been done en prince. So 

 xistounding, indeed, sounded the sum total, that when my 

 friend, in something like a fit of offended dignity, ofi'ered 

 to take my share of the nag for my share of the bill, I 

 jumped at once at the exchange, and let him in, in a 

 moment, as " sole proprietor." Of course the only plan 

 for bettering this was to stop up the propensity altogether, 

 or to have a plater all to myself; and of course everybody 

 can give a tolerably good guess as to which of the two 

 events was the more likely to come off* first. From a 



b2 



