"Thanks," said Pratt; "but I am not a simple Arcadian in my ideas. Oh, by the way, Van, here's a note for you which somebody seems to have dropped." Vanleigh almost snatched the muddy note, which was directed in a fine, lady's hand; and there was a curious pinched expression about his lips as he took in the address. "Ah, yes; thanks, much," he drawled. "Very kind of you, I'm shaw. By the way, Trevor, dear boy," he continued, turning to his friend, "hadn't you better send one of the fellows for some things, and then we might walk on to the Corner if you had nothing better to do? Try a suit of mine; those don't fit you well." "No, I'll keep to my own style," said Trevor, laughing. "I don't think I could quite manage your cut." Then nodding merrily in answer to the other's rather disgusted look, he sent a messenger to his hotel, and strolled off to one of the dormitories, while Frank Pratt went into the reading-room, where the others had walked to the window, took up a newspaper, furtively watching Captain Vanleigh and his friend, in the expectation that they would go; but, to his great annoyance, they stayed on till Trevor reappeared, when Vanleigh, with his slow dawdle, crossed to him. "What are you going to do this afternoon, dear boy?" "Well, I was thinking of what you said--running down to the Corner to look at a horse or two. Things I don't much understand." "I'll go with you," said Vanleigh. "You'll come, won't you, Flick?" "Delighted, quite!" was the reply, very much to Pratt's disgust--the feeling of disgust being equally shared by Vanleigh, when he saw "that gloveless little humbug" get up to accompany them. No matter what the feelings were that existed, they sent for a couple of cabs, and a few minutes after were being trundled down Piccadilly towards what is still known as "The Corner" where that noble animal the "'oss" is brought up and knocked down day by day, in every form and shape--horses with characters, and horses whose morals are bad; right up through park hacks and well-matched high steppers, greys, chestnuts, roans and bays, well-broken ladies' steeds, good for a canter all day, to the very perfection of hunters up to any weight--equine princes of the blood royal, that have in their youth snuffed the keen air of the Yorkshire wolds; mares with retrousse noses and the saucy look given by a dash of Irish blood. Racers, too, are there, whose satin skins, netted with veins, throb with the blue blood that has come down from some desert sire, who has been wont in fleet career to tear up the sand of Araby like a whirlwind, spurn it behind his hoofs, and yet, at the lightest touch of the bit, check the lithe play of his elastic limbs at the opening of some camel or goat-hair tent, where half a dozen swarthy children are ready to play with it, and crawl uninjured about its feet-- the mother busily the while preparing the baken cakes and mares-milk draught for her Bedouin lord. Volume 1, Chapter III.