Boy made a cursory inspection of the pony"s mouth.
"Eleven off," she said.
"That"s too old to play polo."
She believed it to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an authority on the game to justify her in saying so.
"Anyway, I"m getting too heavy for him," Silver went on. "Joint too big for the dish, as they say. That fellow"s more my sort, ain"t you, old lad?" He nodded to the next loose-box, where his seventeen-hand hunter, Banjo, stood, blowing at them through the bars. "What Heart of Oak wants is a nice light weight just to hack him about the Downs and ease him down into the grave."
That evening after supper Jim Silver sang.
Apart from the members of the Eton Mission Clubs there were perhaps a dozen men in the world--Eton men all, boating men most--who knew that he did "perform," to use their expression; and just two women--Boy Woodburn and her mother. Old Mat, to be sure, did not count, for he always slept through the "performance."
The young man"s repertoire consisted of two songs--_The Place Where the Old Horse Died_ and _My Old Dutch_.
With a good natural voice, entirely untrained, he sang with a deep and quiet feeling that made his friends affirm that once you had heard Silver Mug"s--
_We"ve been together now for forty years, And it don"t seem a day too much, There ain"t a lady livin" in the land As I"d swop for my dear old Dutch._
you would never listen to Albert Chevalier again.
That, of course, was the just and admirable exaggeration of youth and friendship.
But it was the fact that always after the young man had sung there was an unusually prolonged silence, and, as Amersham once said, you felt as if you were in church.
This evening, after he had finished, and Mrs. Woodburn had broken the silence with her quiet "Thank you," the young man returned to the subject he had broached in the stable.
Silver indeed was nothing if not dogged, as the girl was beginning to find out.
"I say, Miss Woodburn," he began in that casual way of his, "I wish you"d take charge of that old yellow moke o" mine."
Boy shook her head.
He laughed and drew his chair beside her as she worked. Not seldom now he doffed the Puritan with her, and became easy, chaffing, almost gallant. Amersham and his friends would have been amazed had they seen their sober Jim Silver so much at home with a lady.
"Oh, I say--why not?" he protested, boyish and chaffing.
"He"s too much of a handful for me," said the girl gravely, threading her needle against the light.
He laughed, delighted, smacking his knee as he did when pleased, while even Ma, who of wont turned a deaf ear on the young couple, smiled sedately.
"I like that!" cried Silver. "Ha! ha! ho! ho! That"s a good un." Then he turned grave, almost lugubrious. "But of course if you won"t have him I must do something to him. I"m too fond of the old fellow to let him rot."
Next morning, before he left for London, Boy saw him from her window holding intimate communion with Monkey Brand in the Paddock Close beside the wood.
When he had driven away, the girl descended from her eyrie and cross-examined the little jockey sharply.
Monkey looked secretive and mysterious even for him.
"He"s a very queer gentleman," was all he would say. "One o" them that"s been to India without their "ats, I should say. You know, Miss?" He tapped his forehead. "Melted a-top."
"What did he _say_?" persisted the girl.
"He said n.o.body was to exercise Heart of Oak only unless you wanted him.
And he said he"d make up his mind next week."
"Make up his mind?"
"That was the word, Miss."
"Bring me the gun," ordered Boy.
The little man obeyed sulkily.
"It"ll be in my room," she said. "And it"ll stay there."
"Very good, Miss," replied the jockey, and winked to himself as the girl ascended the ladder.
That evening, as Old Mat slept noisily by the fire with open mouth, the two women worked.
Mrs. Woodburn every now and then lifted her eyes to her daughter"s face and let them dwell there, as the sky dwells on a tree.
"D"you like him, Boy?" she asked at length, tranquilly.
The girl for once was taken by surprise. She flushed a little and perhaps for the first time in her life fenced.
"Who, mother?"
"Mr. Silver."
"Yes," said the girl. "He"s like Billy Bluff--only less rowdy."
CHAPTER XXIII
The Duke"s Hounds
Silver"s Leicestershire friends were under the delusion that he was keeping his hunters at Lewes. And so indeed he did till the hunting season began; and then he brought them over to Putnam"s.
The Duke"s north-country stud-groom, who was in _The Beehive_ at Folkington, as they came along the road from Lewes, ran out of the bar to have a look at them.
"Ma wud!" he whistled. "Champion!"
And Mike Rigg was right. Silver"s horses indeed were the one item of his personal expenditure on which the young man never spared his purse. He used to say with perfect truth that except for his stud he could live with joy on 3 a week. But there was no man in England who had a rarer stud of weight-carriers.
"Big as blood elefunks," said Monkey Brand in the awed voice of a worshipper. "Flip a couple o" ton across country singin" hallelooyah all the way."