“Billy,” said Benham, “you’ve the boldest mind that ever I met.”

Prothero’s face lit with satisfaction.  Then his countenance fell again.  “I know I’m better there,” he said, “and yet, see how I let in a whole system of lies to cover my secret humiliations.  There, at least, I will cling to pride.  I will at least think free and clean and high.  But you can climb higher than I can.  You’ve got the grit to try and live high.  There you are, Benham.”

Benham stuck one leg over the arm of his chair.  “Billy,” he said, “come and be—­equestrian and stop this nonsense.”

“No.”

“Damn it—­you dive!”

“You’d go in before me if a woman was drowning.”

“Nonsense.  I’m going to ride.  Come and ride too.  You’ve a cleverer way with animals than I have.  Why! that horse I was driving the other day would have gone better alone.  I didn’t drive it.  I just fussed it.  I interfered.  If I ride for ever, I shall never have decent hands, I shall always hang on my horse’s mouth at a gallop, I shall never be sure at a jump.  But at any rate I shall get hard.  Come and get hard too.”

“You can,” said Billy, “you can.  But not I!  Heavens, the trouble of it!  The riding-school!  The getting up early!  No!—­for me the Trumpington Road on foot in the afternoon.  Four miles an hour and panting.  And my fellowship and the combination-room port.  And, besides, Benham, there’s the expense.  I can’t afford the equestrian order.”

“It’s not so great.”

“Not so great!  I don’t mean the essential expense.  But—­the incidentals.  I don’t know whether any one can realize how a poor man is hampered by the dread of minor catastrophes.  It isn’t so much that he is afraid of breaking his neck, Benham, as that he is afraid of breaking something he will have to pay for.  For instance—.  Benham! how much did your little expedition the other day—?”

He stopped short and regarded his friend with round eyes and raised eyebrows.

A reluctant grin overspread Benham’s face.  He was beginning to see the humour of the affair.

“The claim for the motor-bicycle isn’t sent in yet.  The repair of the mudguards of the car is in dispute.  Trinity Hall’s crockery, the plate-glass window, the whip-lash and wheel and so forth, the hire of the horse and trap, sundry gratuities. . . .  I doubt if the total will come very much under fifty pounds.  And I seem to have lost a hat somewhere.”

Billy regarded his toes and cleared his throat.

“Depending as I do on a widowed mother in Brixton for all the expenditure that isn’t covered by my pot-hunting—­”

“Of course,” said Benham, “it wasn’t a fair sample afternoon.”

“Still—­”

“There’s footer,” said Benham, “we might both play footer.”

“Or boxing.”

“And, anyhow, you must come with me when I drive again.  I’m going to start a trotter.”