CHAPTER XV TAKING A HINT

No man alive subscribed more heartily than did the Honourable Crasher to Mr. Sheridan’s aphorism, that “If the early bird catches the worm, what a fool must the worm be to get up earlier than the bird!” It was always a matter of great difficulty to get the Honourable out of bed, and not to be managed without considerable diplomacy. The stud-groom and valet laid their heads together for this purpose with laudable ingenuity, the former entertaining a professional regard for the hack’s legs, the latter being much averse to the idea of a hurried toilet. He liked to turn the Honourable out as a gentleman should be dressed, resplendent in scarlet, and with faultless boots and breeches. In his own opinion, proper justice could not be done to the garments he had prepared, under an hour and a quarter; and when the place of meeting was a dozen miles off, and the church clock chiming half-past nine found his master still in bed, the valet might be seen pervading the passages with tears in his eyes. The ruse he found most efficacious was to tap at the door soon after eight, and say it was near ten. The Honourable’s watch was pretty sure to have been left downstairs, or, if in his bedroom, to have stopped, unwound; and often as the trick had succeeded, Crasher never seemed yet to have found it out. Even if he rose in time, however, he was a sad dawdle. There were letters to be read, and sometimes answered. He would breakfast in a gorgeous dressing-gown, and smoke a cigar over a French novel afterwards, never dreaming of getting into his hunting things till he ought to have been more than halfway to covert. Sometimes, and this was the sorest grievance of all, he would take a fancy not to hunt, and then changing his mind at the last moment, order round one of the unfortunate hacks, and go off like a flash of lightning.

On the morning to which I have already alluded, Mr. Tiptop, cleaned, breakfasted, and considerably freshened up, having completely recovered the effects of his early gallop, seen everything set straight about the stable, and dispatched two of his master’s horses to Shearsby Inn, was vainly waiting for an audience at the Honourable’s bedroom door about ten A.M.

The valet, a staid elderly man, who, as Mr. Tiptop would have said, made a point of “standing in” with all the upper servants, treated the stud-groom with considerable deference. They had exhausted their usual topic of the weather, the probability of sport, and their master’s propensities for repose, and were now beguiling the time by listening at his chamber door alternately, till the welcome sound of much splashing and hard breathing announced that the Honourable had tumbled out of bed into his tub.

After awhile the valet gave a low tap at the door, accompanied by a cough.

“Who’s there?” said the inmate of the chamber, sedulously drying his elegant proportions before an enormous fire.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” answered the well-drilled servant. “Mr. Tiptop, sir, wishes to speak to you, sir.”

“Tell him to go to the devil,” rejoined the Honourable, struggling leisurely into a clean shirt.

There was no occasion for the polite valet to repeat this message, inasmuch as Mr. Tiptop was there to hear it for himself. The servants looked at each other, and laughed in their sleeve.

Presently, the valet, who knew to a second how long each stage of the toilet ought to last, knocked again.

“What is it?” murmured the Honourable very indistinctly, for the sufficient reason that he was sedulously brushing his teeth.

“Mr. Tiptop, sir, wishes to know if he can see you before you go down to breakfast.”

The stud-groom was well aware that no confidential communication could take place during that meal, disturbed as it usually was by the arrival of other late starters, dropping in, to hurry their friend.

“Come in,” gurgled the Honourable: and his stud-groom made his appearance, smoothing his shiny head as all grooms do.

“What’s the matter, Tiptop?” inquired his master, poising the tooth-brush between finger and thumb. “Are all the horses lame?”

“Not so bad as that, sir,” answered Tiptop, respectfully, revolving in his mind how he should begin what he had to say. For all his languor, there was something about Crasher that made people very loath to take a liberty. “I only wanted to tell you, sir, of a horse I’ve seen as you ought to buy. I thought I’d make bold to tell you before any of the other gentlemen got word of him. He’s a flyer, sir—that’s what he is!”

Now, in all matters relating to the stable, Mr. Tiptop ruled paramount, the Honourable’s system being to make his groom look out for horses, and if he liked their appearance himself, to buy them at once. With regard to riding, I have already said, he could make them all go, if they had any pretensions to hunters about them.

“Whose is he?” was the next question asked; for the Honourable was now finishing his toilet in such a hurry as would have made you suppose he never was late in his life.

“Mr. Sawyer’s, sir,” answered Tiptop. “It’s the bay. He’ll be on him to-day at Barkby Holt.”

“Very well,” answered the Honourable, buttoning on a watch-chain, with half-a-dozen lockets attached, as he emerged from his room. “Tell Smiles to get breakfast directly, and send the hack round in ten minutes!”

Mr. Tiptop looked after him admiringly, as he clanked downstairs. “He means business this morning,” thought the groom, “and I’ll lay a new hat he buys the bay horse!”

Now if Mr. Tiptop had felt he had the best of the morning trial, it had been his intention to pull his horse back, and gammon his friend Isaac that he was beat, with the laudable determination to get the better of that worthy, as well as of the general public, by making good use of his knowledge previous to the race. When, however, he found that her antagonist had the heels of Chance, whom he had already tried with the other grooms to be quite the best in the town, he altered his tactics altogether. Obviously they ought to have both the flyers in the same stable; and it would be wiser to stand in with Isaac, and make the old groom a sharer in the profits, as he was already in the information which their early rising had enabled them to obtain. Mr. Tiptop forgot that it is as dark before dawn as it is after nightfall. He might, perhaps, have been farther enlightened, had he, instead of waiting at his master’s door till the Honourable’s teeth had been polished to the required degree of whiteness, been able to assist at an interview which took place at the same hour between Isaac and his master, in a room where the latter had just finished breakfast.

The old groom made no apology for entering; as was his custom, he plunged at once in medias res.

“I’ve sent two out for you to-day,” said he, marching up to Mr. Sawyer’s chair, and confronting him with a grin, such as might be cut out of mahogany.

“And left one in the stable! you old idiot!” exclaimed the indignant Mr. Sawyer. “What the deuce have you done that for?”

“You’ll want a second horse to-day,” answered the groom. “You’ll have a bid for Marathon before you’ve been on him half an hour. Leastways, if you’ve the discretion not to go a-showing of him up.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Sawyer, with a dawning of intelligence overspreading his countenance, for he knew his servant’s diplomatic talents of old.

“Only that they’re all of ’em wanting a nag to win this here donkey-race, as I call it; for none but a donkey would be concerned in such a tomfoolery; and Mr. Crasher, he’s satisfied by this time that Marathon’s the one as just can. You sit still upon him to-day, and keep jogging of him about, to qualify like, till the hounds find, and then open your mouth, and take what they offer you.”

Mr. Sawyer had implicit confidence in his old servant; still he could not help wishing to be further enlightened.

“You must have told some precious yarns,” said he, “to make people believe Marathon could run up with a man in mud-boots!”

“I never said a word!” answered Isaac; “people may believe their own eyes. Mr. Tiptop and I, we tried ’un this very morning again Chance; and though she’s the best in the town, we beat her by more than a length.”

“Marathon beat that mare!” exclaimed Mr. Sawyer, now completely taken aback. “What do you mean?”

Old Isaac’s features were distorted once more into the mahogany grin.

“Well, if Marathon didn’t, Jack did,” said he quietly. “You couldn’t tell one from the other in their clothing when it’s dark, and the Dandy would win the Derby if it wasn’t over half-a-mile.”

It was too true: though the smart little nag never could stay a mile at a racing pace in his best days, he was as quick on his legs as a rabbit, and nothing could touch him, for five furlongs. Swaddled up in his clothes under the dubious twilight of a winter’s morning, Mr. Tiptop never suspected him, and went home with the conviction that Marathon, and none other, was the horse that had beaten his favourite.

Mr. Sawyer laughed to himself as he rode Jack very gingerly on to Barkby.