Boy Woodburn | Page 9

it.
The signal was instantly answered.
A handkerchief was waved at a lower window.
"There's Mar!" Mat said comfortably, easing into a walk. "One thing, she ain't dead. That's a little bit o' better."
He gave his plump body a half-turn and began again to whimper over his shoulder to the occupant of the back seat.
"You wouldn't get your old dad into trouble, would you then, Boy?--not by tellin' Mar I done a lot o' things I never dreamed o' doin'. If you was to say I betted now you'd say what wasn't true, wouldn't you?--and you've often told me what come to Annie Nyas and Sophia in the Book, haven't you? A lesson to us all that was--to be took to 'eart, as the sayin' is. All I done was just this: An old friend come up to me--had a drop in him, must have had!--and he says: 'Your old hoss won't win, Mat,' he says, very insultifyin'. 'My old hoss will win then,' I answers, polite as you please. 'De we,' I says, mindful o' Mar. 'Will you back your opinion?' says he, sneery. 'No,' I says, very firm. 'No; I never bets--cause o' you know.' 'Oh, yes,' he says, 'I know you--and I know your master,' meaning Mar." He swung round and addressed the young man riding on his right. "That's 'ow they go on at me all the time, Mr. Silver," he whined. "Persecute me somethin' shockin' because o' me religion--for all the world as if I could help it."
"It's not your religion," came the deep voice from the back seat. "It's mother's."
"What's it matter whose religion it is if they martyrizes you for it at the stake?" wheezed the old man. He took up his tale anew. "So as I was sayin' he says to me, Sam Buckland do: 'Man to man,' he says, 'I respeck you for stickin' to principles what you don't 'old, Mat,' he says. 'And far be it from me to undermine a man's faith what he learned acrost his mother's knee,' he says. 'But see here,' he says; 'if that 'ole rockin'-hoss o' yours gets round the course I'll give you fi' pun for yourself; if a miracle happens and he gets a place I'll make it a tenner; and if all the other hosses takes and lays down and dies so as he wins outright, it's a pony to you.' And I says to him: 'As to my champion, Mr. Buckland,' I says, 'you're jealous of him and I don't blame you, seein' as he can roll faster nor any hoss o' yours can gallip. But if he don't win,' I says, 'I'll give you fi' pun to buy yourself some manners with, fi' pun for your missus to get her a better 'usband, and fi' pun for that bald-faced, ewe-knecked, calf-kneed son of a laughin' jack-ass who calls you dad.' That's all that happened' Boy. That's not bettin', is it? That's fair give-and-take. Quite a different thing entirely. Ask the clergee."
They pulled up in the road.
Mrs. Woodburn came slowly down the steps of the old manor-house to meet them.
She was a tall woman, gray, rather gaunt, and perhaps twenty years younger than her husband. She wore a plain black dress, and there was about her a wonderful atmosphere of peace and dignity.
Nobody but Mat would have dreamed of calling such a woman Mar, and any other woman of the type but Patience Longstaffe would have resented the name.
"I'm glad you won, dad," she said in a voice deep as her daughter's, but harsher, as though from wear. "And I hope you won fair."
The old man, who had alighted, was passing the reins through the rings of the saddle.
"There she goes!" he croaked in his protesting voice. "Might just as well be on the crook--straight, I might, for all the credit I gets."
Mrs. Woodburn kissed him and the girl, and ran a practised eye and hand down Goosey Gander's fore-legs.
His wife might be a Puritan, but Mat was the first to admit that there was little about a horse he could teach her.
"He got round all right, then, Brand?" she said.
"Oh, yes, 'm," chirruped the little jockey. "It was light goin', so his pipe didn't trouble him; and he fenced like he was in Paridise. I lay off a bit till they was all bust, then I come right away through 'em and spread-eagled the lot."
The woman's hand, strong yet tender, passed down the old horse's flank.
"I see you waled him," she said.
"Well, 'm, just a couple of taps like--to settle it," deprecated the other. "Three fences from home I see I'd got the measure of 'em, and come away from the ruck with a rattle. Then I easied him home."
"You'd no call to take up your whip, Brand," grumbled the old man.