“He’s got good points,” said Mr. Herbert Albert Flick, “but I’d like a straighter back.”

“I’ll be hanged, though, Jack,” was Mr. Mowbray Russell’s comment, “if I’d ride him in the Park before he’s docked.  Say what you like about action, a horse has got to have style.”

“Moves easy, falls off a little too much to suit me in the quarter,” suggested Mr. Pennington Docstater, sucking the head of his cane.  “How about his staying quality, Stalker?”

“That’s just where he is, Mr. Docstater; take him on the road, he’s a stayer for all day.  Goes like a bird.  He’ll take you along at the rate of nine miles in forty-five minutes as long as you want to sit there.”

“Jump?” queried little Bobby Simerton, whose strong suit at the club was talking about meets and hunters.

“Never refused anything I put him at,” replied Stalker; “takes every fence as if it was the regular thing.”

Storm was in this way entirely taken to pieces, praised and disparaged, in a way to give Stalker, it might be inferred from his manner, a high opinion of the knowledge of these young gentlemen.  “It takes a gentleman,” in fact, Stalker said, “to judge a hoss, for a good hoss is a gentleman himself.”  It was much discussed whether Storm would do better for the Park or for the country, whether it would be better to put him in the field or keep him for a roadster.  It might, indeed, be inferred that Jack had not made up his mind whether he should buy a horse for use in the Park or for country riding.  Even more than this might be inferred from the long morning’s work, and that was that while Jack’s occupation was to buy a horse, if he should buy one his occupation would be gone.  He was known at the club to be looking for the right sort of a horse, and that he knew what he wanted, and was not easily satisfied; and as long as he occupied this position he was an object of interest to sellers and to his companions.

Perhaps Mr. Stalker understood this, for when the buyers had gone he remarked to the stable-boy, “Mr. Delancy, he don’t want to buy no hoss.”

When the inspection of the horse was finished it was time for lunch, and the labors of the morning were felt to justify this indulgence, though each of the party had other engagements, and was too busy to waste the time.  They went down to the Knickerbocker.

The lunch was slight, but its ordering took time and consideration, as it ought, for nothing is so destructive of health and mental tone as the snatching of a mid-day meal at a lunch counter from a bill of fare prepared by God knows whom.  Mr. Russell said that if it took time to buy a horse, it ought to take at least equal time and care to select the fodder that was to make a human being wretched or happy.  Indeed, a man who didn’t give his mind to what he ate wouldn’t have any mind by-and-by to give to anything.  This sentiment had the assent of the table, and was illustrated by varied personal experience; and a deep feeling prevailed, a serious feeling, that in ordering and eating the right sort of lunch a chief duty of a useful day had been discharged.