Slip was riding a big chestnut mare down the street and humming an
accompaniment to the tune she was playing with her bit. He pulled up
when he saw me and, still humming, sat looking down at me.
"Stables in ten minutes," I said. "You're heading the wrong way."
"A dispensation, my lad," he replied. "I'm taking Miss Spangles up on
the hill to get her warm--'tis a nipping and an eager air."
A man was coming across the road towards us. He was incredibly old and
stiff and the dirt of many weeks was upon him. He stood before us and
held out a battered yachting cap. "M'sieur," he said plaintively.
Miss Spangles cocked an ear and began to derange the surface of the
road with a shapely foreleg. She was bored.
"Tell him," said Slip, "that I am poorer even than he is; that this
beautiful horse which he admires so much is the property of the King
of ENGLAND, and that my clothes are not yet paid for."