silence that they would not have broken for any earthly consideration; others were talking hard and fast, and through the air heavily weighted with the varieties of tobacco, from tiny cigarettes to giant cheroots, from rough bowls full of cavendish to sybaritic rose-water hookahs, a Babel of sentences rose together:  “Gave him too much riding, the idiot.”  “Take the field, bar one.”  “Nothing so good for the mare as a little niter and antimony in her mash.”  “Not at all!  The Regent and Rake cross in the old strain, always was black-tan with a white frill.”  “The Earl’s as good a fellow as Lady Flora; always give you a mount.”  “Nothing like a Kate Terry though, on a bright day, for salmon.”  “Faster thing I never knew; found at twenty minutes past eleven, and killed just beyond Longdown Water at ten to twelve.”  All these various phrases were rushing in among each other, and tossed across the eddies of smoke in the conflicting tongues loosened in the tabagie and made eloquent, though slightly inarticulate, by pipe-stems; while a tall, fair man, with the limbs of a Hercules, the chest of a prize-fighter, and the face of a Raphael Angel, known in the Household as Seraph, was in the full blood of a story of whist played under difficulties in the Doncaster express.

“I wanted a monkey; I wanted monkeys awfully,” he was stating as Forest King’s owner came into the smoking-room.

“Did you, Seraph?  The ‘Zoo’ or the Clubs could supply you with apes fully developed to any amount,” said Bertie, as he threw himself down.

“You be hanged!” laughed the Seraph, known to the rest of the world as the Marquis of Rockingham, son of the Duke of Lyonnesse.  “I wished monkeys, but the others wished ponies and hundreds, so I gave in; Vandebur and I won two rubbers, and we’d just begun the third when the train stopped with a crash; none of us dropped the cards though, but the tricks and the scores all went down with the shaking.  ’Can’t play in that row,’ said Charlie, for the women were shrieking like mad, and the engine was roaring like my mare Philippa—­I’m afraid she’ll never be cured, poor thing!—­so I put my head out and asked what was up?  We’d run into a cattle train.  Anybody hurt?  No, nobody hurt; but we were to get out.  ‘I’ll be shot if I get out,’ I told ’em, ’till I’ve finished the rubber.’  ‘But you must get out,’ said the guard; ’carriages must be moved.’  ‘Nobody says “must” to him,’ said Van (he’d drank more Perles du Rhin than was good for him in Doncaster); ‘don’t you know the Seraph?’ Man stared.  ’Yes, sir; know the Seraph, sir; leastways, did, sir, afore he died; see him once at Moulsey Mill, sir; his “one two” was amazin’.  Waters soon threw up the sponge.’  We were all dying with laughter, and I tossed him a tenner.  ‘There, my good fellow,’ said I, ’shunt the carriage and let us finish the game.  If another train comes up, give it Lord Rockingham’s compliments and say he’ll thank it to stop, because collisions shake his trumps together.’  Man thought us mad; took tenner though, shunted us to one side out of the noise, and we played two rubbers more before they’d repaired the damage and sent us on to town.”