cousin's the oddest man," Bruce said to Jack.

"Like to buy a horse?" Bunny asked him.

"I'm ready to buy anything if I can sell it at a profit," he answered.

"Well, swallow your breakfast and come and have a look. You'll get
your profit all right. I've never known you when you didn't."

In a few minutes we all went to the stables, and Bunny began haggling
operations. Bruce bid a "fiver" for Thunderer, and was told he would
fetch that for cats' meat, and then the game went on. In the end Bruce
said he would give fifteen guineas, and take him to London that day. I
nearly seized him by the hand, and told him he was a rare good sort,
which I was quite convinced he was not. The livery-stable man did not
seem to care what happened as long as Thunderer went away, and I must
say that he made the least of his eccentricities.

"That's a bit of luck," Bunny said to me when the bargain was settled,
"I get rid of my cousin and a horse on the same day, both real bad
lots. He's our family pestilence," and he nodded at Bruce's back.

For Jack's benefit I added up the result of my investment, and came to
the conclusion that I was about eighteen-pence to the bad when I had
paid for the damage Thunderer had done, and all the little incidental
expenses connected with him. You can't own a race-horse for nothing,
and I think that I--or rather Bunny--did well. I was told afterwards
that Bruce raffled my horse and sold fifty tickets for a sovereign
each, but I am not inclined to believe that story, and at any rate I
should not have known where to find fifty fools. I certainly could not
have discovered them in Oxford, where some people, who have never been
there, make the mistake of thinking they are to be found in crowds.

I believe the dons held a meeting about Jack and me, for The Bradder
told us there was a great difference of opinion about the sort of men
we were. I tried to get more out of him, but failed. However, we got
off lightly, for Jack was only gated for a week, while I was given a
lecture by the Subby, and had a week added to my term of imprisonment.

The Bradder also advised me to give up going to race-meetings.

CHAPTER XXII

A TUTORSHIP

I was beginning to forget that I had ever been the owner of a
race-horse when I got a furious letter from my father. The Warden had
told my uncle, and my uncle lost his head and wrote to my people
instead of to me. A tale of this kind always flies round at a