Nor does he let the infuriated master of the horse out of his confinement till he has finished the quadrupeds, when, opening the door, with mock politeness, he says: "Your lordship's 'osses is done, if so be you've a mind to take 'em away."
Shouts of laughter greet the groom as he emerges from the shed, and angry as he is he has sense enough to see that the laugh is not on his side; so without a word he trots off, inwardly vowing vengeance against Joe Billings.
"There'll be a bother over this job, Joe," says Harry the Second Whip, who has come down to the forge from the kennels. "Young Cock-a-hoop will make a fine tale of it when he gets home."
"Well," replies Joe, "what can they do? If they takes the shoeing away it won't break me, and when I says a thing I means it. Them as comes first is served first, and if they don't like it they can lump it."
After finishing off with Harry, Joe slips on his coat (such a coat too! all patched, grimy, and full of small holes burnt by the sparks), and, rolling up his leather apron, he takes himself away to see if "t' missus has got breakfust ready." Half an hour suffices for his meal, and by the time he returns he finds quite a string awaiting his arrival, and he sets to work with a will.
At last he comes to a horse shod on the French system, with the shoe let in and the frog on the ground, and he calls his mate to point it out. "Here, Bill," says he, "here's one of them Charley shoes as I was a-telling you of. Did yer ever see such a fanglement?" "Why, there ain't no bloomin' shoe at all," replies his assistant, gazing open-mouthed, and listening to Joe's lecture on the subject. "Be we to shoe 'un like that, I wonder?"
"No, no, my lad," interrupts the groom in charge; "the governor only tried it as an experiment, and he wants the 'oss shod in the usual way again."
"Proper way, you means," says Joe; "you won't catch me a-doing an animal after that fashion, I can tell yer. Them experiments is all very well for the Mossoos, who don't 'unt, but when it comes to gitting over a country—laws, it's ridickerlous!"
By ten o'clock Joe has pretty nearly finished, except an odd job or two, such as tacking on a loose shoe for Mr. Grimes the butcher, or "fettling up" old Betty Wilson's donkey, and he has time to turn his attention to a ploughshare or a harrow that requires doctoring, or maybe the springs of Farmer Giles's tax-cart.
As he is engaged on one of these a lad runs in panting and out of breath with a message as "'ow Mr. Stiles would be main glad if Mayster Billings would step over and look at t' red coo, as 'e's afeard on 'er dropping."