Mr. Brennan cleared his throat.  “If you were thinking to leave her in my stables, sir,” he said firmly, “I’d sooner be quit of her.  I’ve only a small place, and I’d lose too much time with her if I had to keep her the way she is.  She might be on my hands three months and die at the end of it.”

The clock here struck the quarter, at which Mr. Gunning ought to start for his train at Westland Row.

“You see, sir—­” recommenced Brennan.  It was precisely at this point that Mr. Gunning lost his temper.

“I suppose you can find time to shoot her,” he said, with a very red face.  “Kindly do so to-night!”

Mr. Brennan’s arid countenance revealed no emotion.  He was accustomed to understanding his clients a trifle better than they understood themselves, and inscrutable though Mr. Gunning’s original motive in buying the mare had been, he had during this interview yielded to treatment and followed a prepared path.

That night, in the domestic circle, he went so far as to lay the matter before Mrs. Brennan.

“He picked out a mare that was as poor as a raven—­though she’s a good enough stamp if she was in condition—­and tells me to buy her.  ’What price will I give, sir?’ says I.  ‘Ye’ll give what they’re askin’,’ says he, ‘and that’s sixty sovereigns!’ I’m thirty years buying horses, and such a disgrace was never put on me, to be made a fool of before all Dublin!  Going giving the first price for a mare that wasn’t value for the half of it!  Well; he sees the mare then, cut into garters below in Nassau Street.  Devil a hair he cares!  Nor never came down to the stable to put an eye on her!  ‘Shoot her!’ says he, leppin’ up on a car.  ‘Westland Row!’ says he to the fella’.  ‘Drive like blazes!’ and away with him!  Well, no matter; I earned my money easy, an’ I got the mare cheap!”

Mrs. Brennan added another spoonful of brown sugar to the porter that she was mulling in a sauce-pan on the range.

“Didn’t ye say it was a young lady that owned the mare, James?” she asked in a colourless voice.

“Well, you’re the devil, Mary!” replied Mr. Brennan in sincere admiration.

The mail-boat was as crowded as is usual on the last night of the Horse Show week.  Overhead flowed the smoke river from the funnels, behind flowed the foam river of wake; the Hill of Howth receded apace into the west, and its lighthouse glowed like a planet in the twilight.  Men with cigars, aggressively fit and dinner-full, strode the deck in couples, and thrashed out the Horse Show and Leopardstown to their uttermost husks.