‘We’re old friends, sure enough,’ returned Jasper meditatively, as he watched the spiral wreaths of smoke curling upwards—‘and I do not like to be disobliging; but I can but repeat that I would rather not ride. My father would be vexed if I did.’
‘And you are a very good boy, as we know; quite a pattern of filial decorum!’ growled out the big man in the gold-laced overalls.
‘That style of argument has no weight with me, Jack,’ returned Jasper, with imperturbable good-humour. ‘I am no stripling, like one of your newly joined, pink-faced cornets, to be goaded by a sneer into acting contrary to my judgment. And I don’t mind owning that I am on my good behaviour at Carbery just now, and would rather not, please, do anything of which Sir Sykes would disapprove.’
‘It would be well worth your while,’ urged his host, striking his spurred heel into the ragged carpet; ‘worth any man’s while who was not, like young Mash the brewer, my new subaltern, born with a gold-spoon in his mouth. There are sixty-seven horses entered for the race, and we could share the stakes between us, if we win.’
‘Yes—_if_ we win!’ returned Jasper with a laugh that was almost insolent. ‘I have pretty well made up my mind, though, to renounce the character of gentleman rider for some time to come.’
‘And quite right too; but there may be an exception—may there not—to so strict a rule?’ cheerfully replied the other captain, as he arose and busied himself in the concoction of some curious beverage, in which transparent ice and dry champagne, powdered sugar and sliced cucumber, strawberries and maraschino, were amalgamated into a harmonious whole. ‘I shan’t as yet take “No” for an answer, or give up the hope that you will stand by an old friend like myself in a matter which that old friend has very much at heart. With you in the saddle, I should feel victory certain.’
Confidence is strangely infectious. Jasper knew by the ring of his friend’s voice that he was very much in earnest, and began for the first time to consider that there must be some hidden reason for the cavalry officer’s unprecedented pertinacity.
Captain John Prodgers was in his own line a typical officer of a class to be found in more than one fashionable regiment. Living as he had always done amongst men of rank and fortune, he had thriven somehow by dint of better brains and readier assurance than fell to the lot of his companions. No one knew whence he came. His origin seemed to date from the gazetting of his commission, and indeed he might be presumed, like a sort of regimental Minerva, to have sprung booted and armed into existence. Nobody had known him as a boy, but the grandest doors in London opened to let him in. Related to nobody of Pall-Mall repute, he was ‘Jack Prodgers’ to a dozen of Lord Georges and Lord Alfreds. The earthen pot swam gaily down the stream along with those of double-gilt metal, and it was certainly not the former that had suffered from any casual collisions.