Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of reasons had never shown her true form.

With half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up its head, and kept him quietly ardent for months past.

When a man has some thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes; and what Dartie had was really good--a three to one chance for an autumn handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one.
The old-fashioned heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of Shirt-on-fire.

But how much more than his shirt depended on this granddaughter of Suspender! At that roving age of forty-five, trying to Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from any other age, trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer.

It was no mean passion, but without money, and a good deal of it, likely to remain a love as airy as her skirts; and Dartie never had any money, subsisting miserably on what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a woman of character, who kept him because he was the father of her children, and from a lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour Street good looks which in their youth had fascinated her.