A curious young man, one of those mixtures of sagacity and apathy, thoughtfulness and blankness, which the idle classes throw up so easily and which make an expensive education look so foolish. His passion is motoring, but he has leanings towards the air, which, however, his wife discourages. He therefore does not fly himself, although he has been up as a passenger once or twice, but spends most of his time between Brooklands and Hendon, being convivial with his aviating friends while they are alive, and following them loyally to the grave when they fall. "What is it like in the air?" I once asked him. "Ripping," he said. "But the sensations?" I continued. "How do you feel?" "Ripping," he said. "And what does the world look like down below as you rush along?" "Ripping," he said. CHAPTER XV IN WHICH I AM INITIATED INTO THE MYSTERIES OF THE RING, AND AM MORE BEWILDERED THAN USUAL BY MY COUNTRYMEN'S AVOIDANCE OF FACTS The scene from our box was remarkable. Beneath was stretched an undulating mass of people such as it is usual to call, in descriptive articles, a sea of humanity, and in the present instance the simile has peculiar propriety, for from it rose a persistent, murmuring roar very like the waves in certain moods. This sound proceeded chiefly from the breakers--or bookmakers--immediately beneath us, in the privileged enclosure where gambling is a duty. Then came the course, and then a square mile of rabble, black in the main, like all crowds, but chequered with brighter colours, and broken by booths and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair. We began our lunch at once and ate through the first race, on which Dollie was not betting. Then Dollie invited me down among the bookies, and the men of us went, except Ingleside. "No," he said, "so many of the staid young gentlemen in my department are absent to-day owing to domestic troubles, that I am nervous. It would hurt me too much to run into any of them. It is too crowded, too," he added. "The fact is, I am an anti-social animal and it's no use disguising the fact. I like a few persons very much; but all the rest affright me. Write me as one who loves his fellow-men but is very easily bored by them."