“Good morning,” I said.
“Do you want to buy a good recipe for a horse, sir?” he asked.
“A horse?” I repeated, wondering whether he was a lunatic, or a genius who had discovered a way to manufacture horses.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “They often fall sick, sir, you know. The saying is, as I daresay you’ve heard, ‘Never trust a woman’s word or a horse’s health.’”
I corrected his quotation.
“I’ve got one or two real good recipes,” he resumed.
“But I’ve got no horse,” I replied, and that seemed to finish the interview.
“No offence, I hope, sir,” he said, and passed on towards the Delectable Mountains.
He was a mystery; his speech disclosed no marked local accent; he had certainly had some education; and he was hawking horse-remedies in Watling Street at sunrise. Here was the germ of my first lesson in rusticity. Except in towns, the “horsey” man does not necessarily look horsey. That particular man resembled a tailor, and by a curious coincidence the man most fearfully and wonderfully learned in equine lore that I have yet known is a tailor.
But horses! Six miles away to the West I could see the steam of expresses on the London and North Western Main line; four miles to the East I could see the steam of expresses on the Midland. And here was an individual offering stable-recipes as simply as though they had been muffins! I reflected on my empty stable, harness-room, coachhouse. I began to suspect that I was in a land where horses entered in the daily and hourly existence of the people. I had known for weeks that I must buy a horse; the nearest town and the nearest railway station were three miles off. But now, with apprehension, I saw that mysterious and dangerous mercantile operation to be dreadfully imminent: me, coram publico, buying a horse, me the dupe of copers, me a butt for the covert sarcasm of a village omniscient about horses and intolerant of ignorance on such a subject!