Doctors differ upon most subjects. “No training like regular hunting,” said Struggles, who meant to have nothing to do with it. “Take him out often, and send him home early,” advised Major Brush, who was generally of opinion that nothing more would be done after 1 P.M. “The half-bred ones seldom stand regular preparation,” opined Mr. Savage, “I should keep him here under my own eye;” while the Honourable Crasher murmured something about “Newmarket being the only place to get a donkey fit.”
Mr. Sawyer turned from one to the other, as if weighing carefully what each had said; then he flung his cigar-end into the grate, finished his liquor at a gulp, and observing, “Well, I must think about it; in the meantime I’m going to hunt him to-morrow,” wished his friends “Good-night,” and departed for what he was pleased to term his “downy.”
As Struggles and Brush, who occupied adjoining bedrooms, shouldered each other up the narrow passage that led to their apartments, the former declared with a stupendous yawn, “He didn’t quite know what to make of their new friend, but fancied, whether the bay was a _dark_ one or not, his owner was well able to take care of himself.” To which the Major, whose eyes seemed much dazzled by the candle in his hand, of which he was spilling the wax with considerable liberality over the passage-carpet, replied, “We shall find out all about him to-morrow, old boy, if we keep our eyes open—that’s all: if we only keep our eyes open!” And for the better furtherance of this wide-awake scheme, the Major, whose eyes were already nearly closed, proceeded to turn in, after an attempt to undress, in which he only partially succeeded.
Mr. Sawyer, winding up his watch and depositing it carefully on his toilet-table, observed a face of considerable wisdom in his looking-glass, as he reflected on the interest which seemed to have been created about Marathon. He balanced the pros and cons: he enumerated, not without disgust, the numerous failings of the horse; then he shook his head twice or thrice, gravely, as was his habit, when, to use his own expression, “he thought he saw his way.”
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AN unshaved face, blotched and parti-coloured from waning inebriety, upturned and open-mouthed in all the imbecility of profound sleep; a recumbent form snoring loudly under a patchwork quilt, and supported by a rickety bedstead, on an uncarpeted floor, in a room with a sloping roof, of which the only furniture seemed to be a box, originally intended for horse-clothing; a five-pound saddle, a pair of spurs, and a black bottle containing a tallow candle that had guttered itself out some two hours previously—all this does not sound like a cheerful and inspiriting scene about five o’clock on a winter’s morning. Nevertheless, such did not fail to call a grim smile into Isaac’s harsh countenance, as he contemplated it, on this, his first visit to Mr. Tiptop’s apartment. Isaac had been revolving the swell stud-groom’s proposal of the evening before, and had come to a decision in his own mind ere he went to sleep, the result of which was his matutinal appearance in the chamber I have endeavoured to describe. He was not a man to waste much time in the contemplation even of a more agreeable sight than that which now met his eyes. He shook Mr. Tiptop roughly by the shoulder till that worthy sat up in bed, and blinked at his visitor’s candle with a ludicrous expression of astonishment and dismay.