Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope

"He had a brown horse last season," said Grindley;—"a little thing that went very fast, but wasn't quite sound on the road."

"That was a mare," said Maxwell, "and he sold her to Cinquebars."*

[*Ah, my friend, from whom I have borrowed this scion of the nobility! Had he been left with us he would have forgiven me my little theft, and now that he has gone I will not change the name.]

"For a hundred and fifty," said Calder Jones, "and she wasn't worth the odd fifty."

"He won seventy with her at Leamington," said Maxwell, "and I doubt whether he'd take his money now."

"Is Cinquebars coming down here this year?"

"I don't know," said Maxwell. "I hope not. He's the best fellow in the world, but he can't ride, and he don't care for hunting, and he makes more row than any fellow I ever met. I wish some fellow could tell me something about that fellow's brown horse."

"I'd never buy a horse of Vavasor's if I were you," said Grindley. "He never has anything that's all right all round."

"And who has?" said Maxwell, as he took into his plate a second mutton chop, which had just been brought up hot into the room especially for him. "That's the mistake men make about horses, and that's why there's so much cheating. I never ask for a warranty with a horse, and don't very often have a horse examined. Yet I do as well as others. You can't have perfect horses any more than you can perfect men, or perfect women. You put up with red hair, or bad teeth, or big feet,—or sometimes with the devil of a voice. But a man when he wants a horse won't put up with anything! Therefore those who've got horses to sell must lie. When I go into the market with three hundred pounds I expect a perfect animal. As I never do that now I never expect a perfect animal. I like 'em to see; I like 'em to have four legs; and I like 'em to have a little wind. I don't much mind anything else."