The 50 pounds had been the last remnant of a bill, done under great
difficulties with a sagacious Jew, and Cecil had no more certainty of
possessing any more money until next pay-day should come round than he
had of possessing the moon; lack of ready money, moreover, is a serious
inconvenience when you belong to clubs where "pounds and fives" are the
lowest points, and live with men who take the odds on most events in
thousands; but the thing was done; he would not have undone it at the
boy's loss, if he could; and Cecil, who never was worried by the loss of
the most stupendous "crusher," and who made it a rule never to think of
disagreeable inevitabilities two minutes together, shook his charger's
bridle and cantered down Piccadilly toward the barracks, while Black
Douglas reared, curveted, made as if he would kick, and finally ended by
"passaging" down half the length of the road, to the imminent peril of
all passers-by, and looking eminently glossy, handsome, stalwart, and
foam-flecked, while he thus expressed his disapprobation of forming part
of the escort from Palace to Parliament.

"Home Secretary should see about it; it's abominable! If we must come
among them, they ought to be made a little odoriferous first. A couple
of fire-engines now, playing on them continuously with rose-water and
bouquet d'Ess for an hour before we come up, might do a little good.
I'll get some men to speak about it in the house; call it 'Bill for
the Purifying of the Unwashed, and Prevention of their Suffocating Her
Majesty's Brigades,'" murmured Cecil to the Earl of Broceliande, next
him, as they sat down in their saddles with the rest of the "First
Life," in front of St. Stephen's, with a hazy fog steaming round them,
and a London mob crushing against their chargers' flanks, while Black
Douglas stood like a rock, though a butcher's tray was pressed against
his withers, a mongrel was snapping at his hocks, and the inevitable
apple-woman, of Cecil's prophetic horror, was wildly plunging between