How it opens
You were gazetted a cornet of the 13th Light Dragoons in the spring of 1854, and your first duty was to buy a horse, your second to lose money at cards, and your third, urgent and unpaid, to learn to stay on the first while doing the second.
The regiment was quartered in the grey cavalry barracks where your father had served before you, and the riding school smelled the same, leather, horse, and boot blacking, the smell of your entire childhood.
A cornet, my dear boy, is the cheapest thing the Queen buys and the dearest thing the regiment owns. Try to be worth the difference.
Choose
Buy the big grey with the reputation and the price to match.
Take the sergeant's recommendation, the ugly brown with the deep chest.
Ride the dealer's chestnut that nobody else would look at twice.