The leaders cringed and winced against their bars. One wheeler, accepting under protest a wipe with the double thong across his quarters, threw himself widely off the pole; the other, butting like a goat, bounced into his collar; and so, starting the whole coach, the painted, varnished, glittering toy passed on, in clouds of dust, through all that wealth of oak and fern, and hill and dale, and gleaming glade and darkling dell, that make a midsummer fairy-land of Windsor Forest on your way to Ascot Races. The man who had thus pulled up his team for alteration of their harness was a well-dressed, clean-made, good-looking young fellow enough. From the crown of his white hat to the soles of his varnished boots he was a "gentleman" all over; and if the choice little posy in his button-hole betrayed a suspicion of dandyism, it was redeemed by the frankness of manner, the good-humoured and unaffected _bonhomie_ cultivated by our young warriors of the Household Brigade, horse and foot. Frank Vanguard, who belonged to the former of these services, was now steering the regimental drag and a roof-ful of brother officers to the great Olympic gathering of modern times on the Cup Day at Ascot. Good spirits, good humour, banter, repartee, and nonsense, reigned supreme, constituting a combination called "chaff;" just as light wine, effervescence, and fragrant herbs, in due proportions, become "cup." The driver had enough to do, with a free but not very handy team and a crowded road, to the whole of which every carriage he passed assumed a prescriptive right; yet could he find leisure to answer in corresponding vein a volley of jesting remarks shot freely at him from behind. "Frank," says a fresh-coloured young warrior, well qualified to enact the part of Achilles, so long as that hero was yet in girl's clothes, "there's a nice bit of galloping ground over the rise. You're not driving a hearse! _Do_ spring 'em a bit, and give 'em the silk!" "I'm not so fond of the silk as _you_ are!" answered Frank, touching his near leader lightly under the bars, as a fly-fisher throws his line. "You used to get double-thonged pretty handsomely at Eton, I remember, but it hasn't done you much good." "Rating and flogging," answered the other, puffing out volumes of smoke; "that's the way to spoil your young entry!" "Waste of whipcord," says a graver youth, desirous, of all things in life, that he should become a Master of Hounds. "They never made you steady from hare!" "You got that, Charlie!" laughed another; but Charlie, ere this, has found a new interest in spasms of anxiety lest they should be passed by a rival drag, coming up in clouds of dust on their quarter, like an enemy's frigate through the smoke of battle. "Who's this cove?" he exclaimed eagerly. "Sits well on his box--nice short-legged team--keeps his whip quiet, and drives to an inch."