He was quickly away, and across the square of Lincoln’s Inn Fields to the attorney’s firm, where apparently his coming was expected, and he was told that the money would be placed in his hands on the following day.  He then communicated with Edward, in the brief Caesarian tongue of the telegraph:  “All right.  Stay.  Ceremony arranged.”  After which, he hailed a skimming cab, and pronouncing the word “Epsom,” sank back in it, and felt in his breast-pocket for his cigar-case, without casting one glance of interest at the deep fit of cogitation the cabman had been thrown into by the suddenness of the order.

“Dash’d if it ain’t the very thing I went and gone and dreamed last night,” said the cabman, as he made his dispositions to commence the journey.

Certain boys advised him to whip it away as hard as he could, and he would come in the winner.

“Where shall I grub, sir?” the cabman asked through the little door above, to get some knowledge of the quality of his fare.

“Eat your ‘grub’ on the course,” said Algernon.

“Ne’er a hamper to take up nowheres, is there, sir?”

“Do you like the sight of one?”

“Well, it ain’t what I object to.”

“Then go fast, my man, and you will soon see plenty.”

“If you took to chaffin’ a bit later in the day, it’d impart more confidence to my bosom,” said the cabman; but this he said to that bosom alone.

“Ain’t no particular colours you’d like me to wear, is there?  I’ll get a rosette, if you like, sir, and enter in triumph.  Gives ye something to stand by.  That’s always my remark, founded on observation.”

“Go to the deuce!  Drive on,” Algernon sang out.  “Red, yellow, and green.”

“Lobster, ale, and salad!” said the cabman, flicking his whip; “and good colours too.  Tenpenny Nail’s the horse.  He’s the colours I stick to.”  And off he drove, envied of London urchins, as mortals would have envied a charioteer driving visibly for Olympus.

Algernon crossed his arms, with the frown of one looking all inward.

At school this youth had hated sums.  All arithmetical difficulties had confused and sickened him.  But now he worked with indefatigable industry on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and his brain craved for stimulant.

This necessity sent his hand to his purse, for the calling of the cab had not been a premeditated matter.  He discovered therein some half-crowns and a sixpence, the latter of which he tossed in contempt at some boys who were cheering the vehicles on their gallant career.

There was something desperately amusing to him in the thought that he had not even money enough to pay the cabman, or provide for a repast.  He rollicked in his present poverty.  Yesterday he had run down with a party of young guardsmen in a very royal manner; and yesterday he had lost.  To-day he journeyed to the course poorer than many of the beggars he would find there; and by a natural deduction, to-day he was to win.