She came up like a human yeast cake. Johnny
sided with the dame, and said I might at least try to act like
a gentleman, even if I weren't one. Perhaps the grape wasn't
getting to Johnny by this time. He was nobby and boss. He was
dropping his r's like a Southerner, and you know how much of a
Southerner Johnny is--Johnstown, Pa.; and he was hollering around
about his little three-year-old, standard-bred, and registered
bay mare out of Highland Belle, by Homer Wilkes, with a mark of
twenty-one, that could out-trot any thing of her age that ever
champed a bit. Did you get that, Jim? That ever champed a bit;
and still he said at noon to-day that he had had two, possibly
three, glasses of wine, but no more. The only way that mare of
Johnny's can go a mile in twenty-one is "In the Baggage Coach
Ahead."
Say, Jim, I've never said much about it, but you let any of these
fellows who own horses get a soak on, and they get to be a kind
of a village pest, with their talk about blowing up in the stretch,
shoe blisters on the left forearm, etc. Now, since when did a horse
get an arm? They have got me winging. I can't follow them at all.
But to return to last night. When Johnny threw that thing at me
about champing the bit, it was all off to Buffalo with little
Will. I went out of business right there.
When I got up this morning I had to ask the bellboy what hotel
I was in.
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