Had a Horse by John Galsworthy — Read

I

Some quarter of a century ago, there abode in Oxford a small bookmaker called James Shrewin -- or more usually ‘Jimmy' -- a run-about and damped-down little man, who made a precarious living out of the effect of horses on undergraduates. He had a so-called office just off the ‘Corn,' where he was always open to the patronage of the young bloods of Bullingdon, and other horse-loving coteries, who bestowed on him sufficient money to enable him to live. It was through the conspicuous smash of one of them -- young Gardon Colquhoun -- that he became the owner of a horse. He had been far from wanting what was in the nature of a white elephant to one of his underground habits, but had taken it in discharge of betting debts, to which, of course, in the event of bankruptcy, he would have no legal claim. She was a three-year old chestnut filly, by Lopez out of Calendar, bore the name of Calliope, and was trained out on the Downs near Wantage. On a Sunday afternoon, then, in late July, ‘Jimmy' got his friend, George Pulcher, the publican, to drive him out there in his sort of dog-cart.