England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Social classes -- England -- Fiction
So Joe Flitten, the Cobbett Lodge apprentice, rode Moonbeam in the New
Stakes, when the colt made most of his rivals at Epsom look like
platers; although it was to be noted that Sir James Otway's unnamed colt
by Desmond out of Diavola, which had won the Woodcote Stakes, did not
run.
"Like common ordinary platers," honest old William avowed.
After this performance the racing-press began to pay attention to
Moonbeam, and when in July he won the Hurst Park Foal Plate with
ridiculous ease they admitted that his victory at Ascot was no fluke.
In August Tony rented a grouse-moor in Yorkshire. His other horses were
not doing too well, but he was feeling prosperous, for Moonbeam had
already repaid him several times over his losses at Epsom; and at the
end of the month a jolly party drove over to York in a four-in-hand to
see the colt canter away with the Gimcrack Stakes. At this meeting
Dorothy really felt that Tony was what in another sense the press would
have called "an ornament to the turf." There were no Mrs. Mainwarings
and Captain Keiths with them at York, and she never felt less like a
Vanity girl than when she heard the crowd cheering Moonbeam's
victory--he was by now a popular horse--and looked round proudly at her
party; at Uncle Chat with Paignton and Charlie Fanhope; at Bella and
Connie, both bright red with joy; at Arthur and Sylvia Lonsdale, and at
Miss Horatia Lonsdale, a delightful aunt who was helping Dorothy
chaperon the girls, an easy enough task as regards Bella and Connie and
not very difficult as regards her niece.
Finally in the autumn Moonbeam won the Middle Park Plate and was voted
the finest two-year-old seen at Newmarket for several seasons.
"And now let him keep quiet till the Guineas," said William Cobbett,
with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You wouldn't run him in the Dewhurst?"
"No, no, let him rest with what he's done."
"Cobbett is right," said Lord Stilton, one of the stewards of the Jockey
Club, who came into the paddock at that moment. "You've got the Derby
next year, Clarehaven, if you don't overwork him. That apprentice of
yours is a treasure, Cobbett."
"A good boy, my lord."
"You don't know my wife," Tony was saying.
"My congratulations, Lady Clarehaven. I hear you picked out with my old
friend William here."
Later on Dorothy was presented to Lady Stilton. She in turn presented
her daughter, the beautiful and charming Lady Anne Varley, whose
engagement to the young Duke of Ulster had just been announced.
"My dear Dorothy," said Harry Tufton that evening, "you must admit that
my advice was good. How much better this sort of thing becomes you than
..." He waved his arms in a gesture of despair at finding any adjective
sufficiently contemptuous for those evenings at Curzon Street before his
lifelong friend, Tony Clarehaven, had followed his advice and sported
the black, white, and purple colors so famous forty years ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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