"A hundred pounds, Master Edgar."
"We will see, Master Poolny."
A week later Edgar has spoiled the paces of the baron’s bays in just the right degree, not too much or too little, and then, having demonstrated to the baron that it is high time to get rid of them, he sells them to Poolny, who sells to Edgar the two magnificent sorrels. Poolny restores the bays to good condition by sending them to pasture for three months, and two years later perhaps sells them again to the baron.
At noon Edgar’s work is done. He returns for lunch to his apartments in the Rue Euler, for he does not live in the baron’s mansion, and never drives the baron. His apartments consist of a ground-floor, heavily upholstered in embroidered plush of the loudest shades, the walls being covered with English lithographs of hunts, steeplechases, famous cracks, and various portraits of the prince of Wales, one of which was presented to Edgar by the prince himself, and bears a dedication from him. Then there are canes, whips, stirrups, bits, and tally-ho horns, arranged in a panoply, with an enormous bust of Queen Victoria, made of polychromatic and loyalist terra cotta, in the centre, between two gilded pediments. Then, free from care, strangling in his blue frock-coats, his head covered with his radiant beacon, Edgar devotes the rest of his day to his own affairs and to his own
