16 STABLE SECKETS. 



As second in command in the Great Stable of the North, 

 he possessed, by right of his position in the social scale, the 

 unquestionable title of " head lad," although no doubt could 

 possibly exist that an interval of many years had elapsed since 

 he possessed the common and too generally disagreeable attri- 

 butes of boyhood. George Spindles, upon the anniversary of 

 his last natal day, announced that " thirty-eight Legers had been 

 run since he was dropped ;" and, admitting this data to be cor- 

 rect, no better circumstantial link could be desired in support 

 of the plain inference that if a lad, in the ordinary acceptation 

 of the term, George Spindles must be an old lad. Greatly to 

 his own mortification, and the detriment of his worldly pros- 

 pects, George Spindles grew, in spite of every check and artifice 

 known to prevent the gradual increase and expansion of his 

 physical proportions, to a length, width, and weight which 

 effectually stopped him from following the ambitious career of 

 a jockey; and making, as far as it was possible, a virtue of 

 necessity, George Spindles called his philosophy to aid in the 

 praiseworthy attempt to be at length contented with his posi- 

 tion, meritoriously attained, as head lad to the Great Stable of 

 the North. 



The average strength of his character will be learned here- 

 after ; but among the weak points which belonged to it may 

 be classed extreme personal vanity. In an adverse moment of 

 his fate, George Spindles summed up the several points of his 

 form and face, and the grand total of " a good-looking feller " 

 was forthwith figured on the slate of his memory, never to be 

 rubbed out. And yet, had he seen himself as others beheld him, 

 the probability is that this grand total would have been arith- 

 metically worked more than once. From a complete absence 

 of whisker and all perceptible trace of beard, George Spindles 

 was necessarily barefaced, although never exhibiting, on any 

 recorded occasion, more than that fair amount of assurance 

 attendant on self-respect. "A party," on the eve of borrowing 

 five shillings of George Spindles, was heard to describe his hair 



