Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

She turned and faced him in mock anger, and he, responding instantly, caught her in his arms and kissed her ardently.

"What a pair of cherubs," he exclaimed, "what a nest of cooing doves--I say, Anna, I must kill that kid--or shall it be the fatted calf? There'll be murder done somewhere if he stops at Hampstead."

"If it were done, then when it were done--O let me go, Willy, your arms are crushing me."

He released her instantly and, snatching up a cap, set out with her to the downs where the horses were being stripped for the gallop. The morning of early summer was delightfully fragrant--a cool breeze came up from the sea and every breath invigorated. Old John Farrier, mounted on a sturdy cob, met them at the foot of a great grassy slope and complained that it was over late in the day for horses to gallop, but, as he added, "they'll have to do it at Ascot and they may as well do it here." A silent man, old John had once accompanied Willy Forrest to a dinner at the Carlton which Anna gave to a little sporting circle. Then he uttered but one remark, seeming to think some observation necessary, and it fell from his lips in the pause of a social discussion. "I always eat sparrer-grass with my fingers," he had said, and wondered at the general hilarity.

Old John was unusually silent upon this morning of the trial, and when he named the weights at which the horses would gallop, his voice sank to a sepulchral whisper. "The old 'oss is giving six pounds," he said, "he should be beat a length. If it's more, go cautious, miss, and save your money for another day. He hasn't been looking all I should like of him for a long time--that's plain truth; and when a horse isn't looking all I should like of him, 'go easy' say I and keep your money under the bed."

Anna laughed at the kindly advice, and leaving the car she walked to the summit of the hill and there watched the horses--but three pretty specks they appeared--far down in the hollow. The exhilaration of the great open spaces, the wide unbroken grandeur of the downs, the sweetness of the air, the freshness of the day, brought blood to her pallid cheeks and a sparkle of life to her eyes. How free it all was, how unrestrained, how suggestive of liberty and of a boundless kingdom! And then upon it all the excitements of the gallop, the thunder of hoofs upon the soft turf, the bent figures of the jockeys, the raking strides of the beautiful horses--Anna no longer wondered why sport could so fascinate its devotees. She felt at such a moment that she would have gladly put her whole fortune upon Whirlwind.