They must wait for me," yawned Bertie.
Crash came the Seraph's thunder on the panels of the door, and a strong volume of Turkish through the keyhole: "Beauty, Beauty, are you dead ?" "Now, what an inconsequent question!" expostulated Cecil, with appealing rebuke.

"If a fellow were dead, how the devil could he say he was?
Do be logical, Seraph." "Get up!" cried the Seraph with a deafening rataplan, and a final dash of his colossal stature into the chamber.

"We've all done breakfast; the traps are coming round; you'll be an hour behind time at the meet." Bertie lifted his eyes with plaintive resignation from the Demirep's yellow-papered romance.
"I'm really in an interesting chapter: Aglae has just had a marquis kill his son, and two brothers kill each other in the Bois, about her, and is on the point of discovering a man she's in love with to be her own grandfather; the complication is absolutely thrilling," murmured Beauty, whom nothing could ever "thrill"-- not even plunging down the Matterhorn, losing "long odds in thou'" over the Oaks, or being sunned in the eyes of the fairest woman of Europe.
The Seraph laughed, and tossed the volume straight to the other end of the chamber.
"Confound you, Beauty; get up!" "Never swear, Seraph; not ever so mildly," yawned Cecil, "it's gone out, you know; only the cads and the clergy can damn one nowadays; it's such bad style to be so impulsive.

Look! You have broken the back of my Demirep!" "You deserve to break the King's back over the first cropper," laughed the Seraph.

"Do get up!" "Bother!" sighed the victim, raising himself with reluctance, while the Seraph disappeared in a cloud of Turkish.
Neither Bertie's indolence nor his insouciance was assumed; utter carelessness was his nature, utter impassability was his habit, and he was truly for the moment loath to leave his bed, his coffee, and his novel; he must have his leg over the saddle, and feel the strain on his arms of that "pulling" pace with which the King always went when once he settled into his stride, before he would really think about winning.
The hunting breakfasts of our forefathers and of our present squires found no favor with Bertie; a slice of game and a glass of Curacoa were all he kept the drag waiting to swallow; and the four bays going at a pelting pace, he and the rest of the Household who were gathered at Royallieu were by good luck in time for the throw-off of the Quorn, where the hero o' the Blue Ribbon was dancing impatiently under Willon's hand, scenting the fresh, keen, sunny air, and knowing as well what all those bits of scarlet straying in through field and lane, gate and gap, meant, as well as though the merry notes of the master's horn were winding over the gorse.