Suddenly General Pendyce’s voice was heard saying very loud, “Stale?  Nonsense, Bee, nonsense!  Why, damme, so it is!”

A hum of voices from the centre of the room covered up that outburst, and Gerald, stepping to the hearth, threw another cedar log upon the fire.  The smoke came out in a puff.

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair smiling, and wrinkling her fine, thin nose.

“Delicious!” she said, but her eyes did not leave her son’s face, and in them was still that vague alarm.

CHAPTER IV

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND

Of all the places where, by a judicious admixture of whip and spur, oats and whisky, horses are caused to place one leg before another with unnecessary rapidity, in order that men may exchange little pieces of metal with the greater freedom, Newmarket Heath is “the topmost, and merriest, and best.”

This museum of the state of flux—­the secret reason of horse-racing being to afford an example of perpetual motion (no proper racing-man having ever been found to regard either gains or losses in the light of an accomplished fact)—­this museum of the state of flux has a climate unrivalled for the production of the British temperament.

Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character, east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the wettest rain, of any place of its size in the “three kingdoms.”  It tends—­in advance even of the City of London—­to the nurture and improvement of individualism, to that desirable “I’ll see you d—–­d” state of mind which is the proud objective of every Englishman, and especially of every country gentleman.  In a word—­a mother to the self-reliant secretiveness which defies intrusion and forms an integral part in the Christianity of this country—­Newmarket Heath is beyond all others the happy hunting-ground of the landed classes.

In the Paddock half an hour before the Rutlandshire Handicap was to be run numbers of racing-men were gathered in little knots of two and three, describing to each other with every precaution the points of strength in the horses they had laid against, the points of weakness in the horses they had backed, or vice versa, together with the latest discrepancies of their trainers and jockeys.  At the far end George Pendyce, his trainer Blacksmith, and his jockey Swells, were talking in low tones.  Many people have observed with surprise the close-buttoned secrecy of all who have to do with horses.  It is no matter for wonder.  The horse is one of those generous and somewhat careless animals that, if not taken firmly from the first, will surely give itself away.  Essential to a man who has to do with horses is a complete closeness of physiognomy, otherwise the animal will never know what is expected of him.  The more that is expected of him, the closer must be the expression of his friends, or a grave fiasco may have to be deplored.