"
"Plenty!" agreed Billy; and lit a cigarette.
"Shannon don't like anny other horse in front of him at all," went on
Murty. "He's that full of pride he never tuk kindly to bein' behind, not
since he was bruk in. He'll gallop like a machine an' lep like a deer if
he gets his head."
"I don't b'lieve you've much show, anyhow," Dave Boone said. "There's
that horse from the hotel at Mulgoa--Blazer, they call him. He's done no
end of racin', and won, too."
"Well, an' if he has, hasn't he the great weight itself to be carryin'?"
demanded Murty.
"Why, he's top weight, of course; but you're carryin' ever so much over
weight," responded Mr. Boone. "If you'd put up a boy instead of Billy,
you could be pounds lighter."
"Ah, git away with your advisin'," replied Murty. "Billy knows the
horse--an' where'd a shlip of a boy be if Shannon cleared out with him?
I'd rather carry too much weight, an' know I'd put a man up as could
hold the horse." His anxious eye fell on the girls. "Miss Norah and Miss
Tommy!--come here an' wish him luck without offerin' me any advice, or
I'll lose me life over the ould race! They have desthroyed me with all
the things they're afther tellin' me to do."
"We won't tell you a thing, Murty--except that he's looking splendid,"
Norah said, stroking Shannon's nose, to which the horse responded by
nuzzling round her pocket in search of an apple.
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