"If I were to choose, I think I should like horse-training.... Oh no, of course I can't recall the training of any specific horse. But I know I know all about it, for all that. I can feel the knowledge of it itching in my finger-ends. Yes--I could train horses. Fruit-farming would require capital." "Who said anything about fruit-farming?" Fenwick laughed aloud. It was a great big laugh, that made Rosalind, who was giving directions in the kitchen, just across the passage, call out to know what they were laughing at. "I'll be hanged if I know," said he, "_why_ I said fruit-farming--I must have had something to do with it. It's all very odd." "But the horses--the horses," said Sally, who did not want him to wander from the point. "How should you go about it? Should you walk into Tattersall's without a character, and ask for a place?" "Not a bit of it! I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and ask them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious quadruped they could find in an hour." "But that would be fibs." "Oh no! I could do it. But I don't know why I know...." "I didn't mean that. I meant you wouldn't have laid the wager." "Yes, I should. I lay it you now! Come, Miss Sally!--a hundred pounds to a brass farthing I knock all the vice out of the worst beast they can find in an hour. I shouldn't say the wager had been accepted, you know." "Well, anyhow, I shan't accept it. You haven't got a hundred pounds to pay with. To be sure, I haven't got a brass farthing that I know of. It's as broad as it is long." "Yes, it's that," he replied musingly--"as broad as it is long. I _haven't_ got a hundred pounds, that I know of." He repeated this twice, becoming very absent and thoughtful. Sally felt apologetic for reminding him of his position, and immediately said so. She was evidently a girl quite incapable of any reserves or concealments. But she had mistaken his meaning. "No, no, dear Miss Sally," said he. "Not that--not that at all! I spoke like that because it all seemed so strange to me. Do you know?--of all the things I can't recollect, the one I can't recollect _most_--can you understand?--is ever being in want of money. I _must_ have had plenty. I am sure of it." "I dare say you had. You'll recollect it all presently, and what a lark that will be!" Sally's ingenious optimism made matters very pleasant. She did not like to press the conversation on these lines, lest Mr. Fenwick should refer to a loan she knew her mother had made him; indeed, had it not been for this the poor man would have been hard put to it for clothes and other necessaries. All such little matters, which hardly concern the story, had been landed on a comfortable footing at the date of this conversation.