Well, he gets plenty of takers!"
Indeed, Colonel Dickinson was stopped right and left to record wagers.
"I got down a little bet myself, this morning, agin his Lady Mary."
Corson chuckled at the thought of such easy money.
"What makes you so sure?" asked Marianne, for even if she were lucky
enough to get the mares she felt that from Corson she could learn
beforehand the criticisms of Lew Hervey.
"So sure? Why anybody with half an eye--" here he remembered that he was
talking to a lady and continued more mildly. "Them bay mares ain't
hosses--they're tricks. Look how skinny all that underpinning is, Miss
Jordan."
"When they fill out--" she began.
"Tush! They won't never fill out proper. Too much leg to make a hoss.
Too much daylight under 'em. Besides, what good would they be for
cow-work? High headed fools, all of 'em, and a hoss that don't know enough
to run with his head low can't turn on a forty acre lot. Don't tell me!"
He forbade contradiction by raising an imperious hand. Marianne was so
exasperated that she looked to Mrs. Corson in the pinch, but that old
lady was smiling dimly behind her glasses; she seemed to be studying the
smoky gorges of the Eagles, so Marianne wisely deferred her answer and
listened to that unique voice which rises from a crowd of men and women
when horses are about to race.
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