“Say, young Alf,” he said.  “Am I a genelman?—­or ain’t I?”

“That ain’t ’ardly for me to say, Jerry,” answered the cherub with delicate tact.

Then there might have been trouble but for the interference of the lordly Albert.

“Don’t you let him pinch nothin’ off o’ you, Alf,” he said.  “Mr. Silver’s all right.”

“What ye mean?” asked the indignant Jerry.  “Ain’t he broke then?”

“He’ll be a rich man again by then I done with him,” answered Albert loftily.  “That’s what I mean.”

“When will you be done with him then?” jeered Jerry.

“After the National,” answered Albert.  “Yes, my boy, you’ll get your ’alf-dollar at Christmas same as usual—­if so be you deserves it.”

Jerry sneered.

“Albert thinks he’s goin’ to get the ride,” he cried. 
“Likely!—­G-r-r-r!”

Albert was unmoved as a mountain and as coldly majestic.

“I don’t think.  I knows,” he said, folding his arms.

“What do you know then?”

“I knows what I knows,” answered Albert, in true sacerdotal style.  “And I knows more’n them as don’t know nothin’.”

Albert did really know something, but he did not know more than anybody else.  In those days, indeed, two facts were common property at Putnam’s.  Everybody knew them, and everybody liked to believe that nobody else did.  The two facts were that Albert was going to ride Four-Pound-the-Second at Aintree, and that Mr. Silver stood to get his money back upon the race.  There was a third fact, too, that everybody knew.  It was different from the other two in that not even Albert pretended that he alone was aware of it.  The third fact was that Monkey Brand was sulking.

The lads knew it, the horses knew it, Billy Bluff knew it; Maudie, who looked on Monkey as her one true friend in the world, knew it; even the fan-tails in the yard had reason to suspect it.

Jim Silver, who had a genuine regard for the little man, and was most reluctant to think evil of him or anyone, was aware of it, and unhappy accordingly.

The only two who seemed not to know what was obvious to all the rest of the world were, of course, the two most concerned—­Old Mat and his daughter.

They were blind—­deliberately so, Silver sometimes thought.

The young man became at length so disturbed that he ventured to suggest to the trainer that all was not well.

The old man listened, his head a-cock, and his blue eyes sheathed.

“I dessay,” was all he said.  “Men is men accordin’ to my experience of ’em.”  He added:  “And monkies monkies.  Same as the Psalmist said in his knowin’ little way.”

Beaten back here, the young man, dogged as always, approached Boy in the matter.

He was countered with an ice-cold monosyllable.

“Indeed,” was all she said.

The young man persisted in spite of his stutter.