Boy Woodburn Part 53

He drew up beside her.

"I'm not a gentleman any more."

She looked straight before her. Her fine lips were firm and resisting, but about her eyes the light stole and rippled deliciously.

"I'm not sure," she said, half to herself.

He pressed up alongside her, lifting his face.

"I'm not!" he cried. "I'm not!" eager as a boy in his protestations.

"You can't chuck that up at me any more."

Boy refused to face him or to be convinced.

"I don't," she said. "I don't believe in cla.s.s. It's the man that matters."

"Hear, hear," he cried. "It's the man--not the money. I see it now. I haven't got tuppence to my name."

She turned her eyes down on him, brushing aside his coquetry with the sweep of her steady gaze.

"D'you mind?" she asked in her direct and simple way as they emerged on to the open Downs.

He sobered to her mood.

"Only in this way," he answered, "that it was my father's show, and I don't like to have let it down."

The girl deliberated.

"I don't see that you could have helped it," she said after a pause.

"No, _I_ couldn't," he admitted. "_He_ could have. It was a One Man show. And when the One Man went it was bound to go in time. However, I've let n.o.body down but myself. And I don't care so much about the stuff."

"No," she said. "You don't want all that. n.o.body does; and it's not good for you."

Preacher Joe had bobbed up suddenly in his fair grand-daughter, as he did not seldom. She was deliciously unaware of the old man's presence at her side; but Jim Silver welcomed him as a familiar with lurking laughter.

"Thank you, sir," he said, and touched his hat. Then he covered his daring swiftly. "Except for the horses I wouldn't cuc-care a hang," he said loudly. "They were the only things mum-money gave me."

Gravely she peeped at him again.

"Shall you sell the lot?"

"I shall sell the 'chasers," he answered.

"All but one," she corrected.

"Which one?"

She nodded up the hill.

"The one you share with me."

He laughed his resounding laughter.

"I'll sell you my share," he said.

"I won't buy," she answered firmly.

"Very well. Then I'll sell to Jaggers."

Boy tapped Silvertail with such an increase of emphasis that the old mare s.n.a.t.c.hed resentfully at her bit.

"You won't," she cried with the old fierce, girlish note in her voice which so delighted him.

"_After_ he's won the National," continued the young man calmly.

"We'll see--_after_," replied Boy.

They pa.s.sed out of the Paddock Close on to the Downs.

"How's he coming on?" asked Jim.

"Monkey Brand says he's streets better than Cannibal," replied the girl.

"We've never had anything to touch him in my time." This was one of few subjects on which the girl sometimes would flow. "Of course he's young for a National horse--only five, and she's in her prime. But he's got the head of an old horse on the body of a young one. Nothing flurries him--once you can get him going."

"And the trouble is there's only one person who can get him going,"

mused the young man.

"I don't know about that," she answered tartly. "He's only run the once in public. And that time he ran rings round his field. Albert was riding--not me."

They were nearing the brow.

A man was labouring up the hill in front of them.

Old Mat pulled up, and the pair jogged up alongside him. The trainer nodded quietly at the heavy figure in front.

"He's out," he wheezed. "On to it pretty quick, too. Heard we're goin'

to gallop Fo'-Pound and he's come to see what he can see."

The man drew to one side to let the riders pa.s.s.

It was Joses; and he had changed.

There was less of the sow and more of the wolf about him than of old.

His s.h.a.ggy whiskers were touched with gray, and there was something hard and fierce about his face. The old inflamed and flabby look had been hammered out of him in the hard school from which he had just emerged.

He eyed the riders as they pa.s.sed.