always able to convert it into a gain.

Dartie, too, was in good feather. Erotic had failed to win the
Lancashire Cup. Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was by a
pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands against him,
had not even started. The forty-eight hours that followed his scratching
were among the darkest in Dartie's life.

Visions of James haunted him day and night. Black thoughts about Soames
mingled with the faintest hopes. On the Friday night he got drunk, so
greatly was he affected. But on Saturday morning the true Stock
Exchange instinct triumphed within him. Owing some hundreds, which by
no possibility could he pay, he went into town and put them all on
Concertina for the Saltown Borough Handicap.

As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum: "That
little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip. He didn't care a cursh.
He wash in--a mucker. If it didn't come up--well then, damme, the old
man would have to pay!"

A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new contempt for
James.

It came up. Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible squeak!
But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!

He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond. He would
'stand' it himself! He cherished an admiration for Irene, and wished to
be on more playful terms with her.