"He'll break my neck some day."
"Don't take away his character," returned his companion, laughing.
"Remember he has had a hard run, and you are not a feather-weight." The
speaker was tall (judging from the length of the well-shaped leg which
lay close against his horse's side), large-framed, and bony; his plain
strong face was tanned to swarthiness by exposure to wind and weather;
moreover, a pair of deep-set dark eyes and long, nearly black mustache
showed that he had been no fair, ruddy youth to begin with.
"No, by Jove!" exclaimed the first speaker. "I don't understand how it
is that I grow so infernally stout. I am sure I take exercise enough,
and live most temperately."
"Exercise! Yes, for five or six months; the rest of the twelve you do
nothing. And as to living temperately, what with a solid breakfast, a
heavy luncheon, and a serious dinner, you manage to consume a great deal
in the twenty-four hours."
"Come, De Burgh! Hang it, I rarely eat lunch."
"Only when you can get it. Say two hundred and ninety times out of the
three hundred and sixty-five days of the year."
"I admit nothing of the sort. The fact is, what I eat goes into a good
skin. Now you might _cram_ the year round and be a bag of bones at the
end of it.
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