The broad moist countenance was again uplifted, a hint of patronage now
tempering its good-natured apathy.

"Sort'er 'ockey on 'orseback."

"That must be sufficiently dangerous," Mr. Iglesias remarked.

"Bless you, yes. Players breaks their backs pretty frequent, and cuts the
ponies about most cruel--"

He ceased speaking abruptly, jammed the brake down with his heel in
response to the conductor's bell, and drew the sweating horses up short
to permit the ingress of fresh passengers. This accomplished, the omnibus
lumbered onwards while Dominic Iglesias fell into further meditation.

The explanation vouchsafed him was still far from explicit; yet this much
of illumination he gained from it, namely, the assurance that all these
goodly personages, Alaric Barking and his sweet companion among them,
were on pleasure bent. One and all they fared forth, on this heavy summer
afternoon, in search of amusement--in search of that intangible yet very
powerful factor in human affairs to which it is given to lift the too
great weight of seriousness from mortal life, cheating perception of
relentless actualities, helping to restore the balance, helping men to
hope, to laugh, and to forget. Perceiving all which, conscious moreover
of the near neighbourhood of Loneliness on the right hand and Old Age on
the left, Iglesias began to bestow on these votaries of pleasure a more
earnest attention, recognising in them the possessors of a secret which
it greatly behoved him to enter into possession of likewise. In what, he
asked himself, did it actually consist, this to him practically unknown