“Quiet to drive, sir, did you say? I should _say_ so. I says _Away_,
and _off_ he goes.” Here the thin scream became a screech. “Then I says
_Pull up, you blighter_, and he stops dead. A child could drive him. He
don’t want no driving. You could drive him with a silken thread.” His
voice melted, and with an exquisite tender cadence he repeated: “With a
silk-en therredd!”
“Well,” I said. “How much?”
“How much, did you say, sir? How much?” He made it appear that this
question came upon him as an extraordinary surprise. I nodded.
He meditated on the startling problem, and then yelled: “Thirty guineas.
It’s giving him away.”
“Make it shillings,” I said. I was ingenuously satisfied with my retort,
but the man somehow failed to appreciate it.
“Come here,” he said, in a tone of intimate confidence. “Come here.
Listen. I’ve had that pony’s picture painted. Finest artist in England,
sir. And frame! You never see such a frame! At thirty guineas I’ll throw
the picture in. Look ye! That picture cost me two quid, and here’s the
receipt.” He pulled forth a grimy paper, and I accepted it from his
villainous fingers. It proved, however, to be a receipt for four pounds,
and for the portrait, not of a pony, but of a man.
“This is a receipt for your own portrait,” I said.
“Now wasn’t that a coorious mistake for me to make?” he asked, as if
demanding information. “Wasn’t that a coorious mistake?”
I was obliged to give him the answer he desired, and then he produced
the correct receipt.
“Now,” he said wooingly, “There! Is it a trade? I’ll bring you the
picture to-night. Finest frame you ever saw! What? No? Look here, buy
him at thirty guineas--say pounds--and I’ll chuck you both the blighted
pictures in!”
“_Away!_” he screamed a minute later, and the cream pony, galvanised
into frantic activity by that sound, and surely not controllable by a
silken thread, scurried off towards the Delectable Mountains.
This was my first insight into horse dealing.