Surprise was a weakness of raw inexperience that Cecil never felt; his gazette as Commander-in-Chief, or the presence of the Wandering Jew in his lodgings would never have excited it in him.

In the first place, he would have merely lifted his eyebrows and said, "Be a fearful bore!" in the second he would have done the same, and murmured, "Queer old cad!" Surprised, therefore, he was not, at the boy's untimely apparition; but his eyes dwelt on him with a mild wonder, while his lips dropped but one word: "Amber-Amulet ?" Amber-Amulet was a colt of the most marvelous promise at the Royallieu establishment, looked on to win the next Clearwell, Guineas, and Derby as a certainty.

An accident to the young chestnut was the only thing that suggested itself as of possibly sufficient importance to make his brother wait for him at five o'clock on a June morning.
Berkeley looked up confusedly, impatiently: "You are never thinking but of horses or women," he said peevishly; "there may be others things in the world, surely." "Indisputably there are other things in the world, dear boy; but none so much to my taste," said Cecil composedly, stretching himself with a yawn.

"With every regard to hospitality and the charms of your society, might I hint that five o'clock in the morning is not precisely the most suitable hour for social visits and ethical questions ?" "For God's sake, be serious, Bertie! I am the most miserable wretch in creation." Cecil opened his closed eyes, with the sleepy indifference vanished from them, and a look of genuine and affectionate concern on the serene insouciance of his face.
"Ah! you would stay and play that chicken hazard," he thought, but he was not one who would have reminded the boy of his own advice and its rejection; he looked at him in silence a moment, then raised himself with a sigh.
"Dear boy, why didn't you sleep upon it?
I never think of disagreeable things till they wake me with my coffee; then I take them up with the cup and put them down with it.

You don't know how well it answers; it disposes of them wonderfully." The boy lifted his head with a quick, reproachful anger, and in the gaslight his cheeks were flushed, his eyes full of tears.
"How brutal you are, Bertie! I tell you I am ruined, and you care no more than if you were a stone.