“He's a nice horse!” said Scanlan, slowly, giving to each word a slow and solemn significance; then, casting a keen glance all around and over him, added, “There 's a splint on the off leg!”
“So there is, the least taste in life,” said Barnes, passing his hand lightly over it; “and was there ever a horse—worth the name of a horse—that hadn't a splint? Sure, they 're foaled with them! I wanted Miss Mary to let me take that off with an ointment I have, but she would n't. 'It's not in the way of the tendon,' says she. 'It will never spoil his action, and we 'll not blemish him with a mark.' Them's her very words.”
“He's a nice horse,” said Scanlan, once more, as if the very parsimony of the praise was the highest testimony of the utterer; “and in rare condition, too,” added he.
“In the very highest,” said Barnes. “He was as sure of that cup as I am that my name 's Tim.”
“What cup?” asked Scanlan.
“Kiltimmon,—the June race; he's entered and all; and now he's to be sold,—them 's the orders I got yesterday; he's to be auctioned at Dycer's on Saturday for whatever he'll bring!”
“And now, what do you expect for him, Barnes?” said Maurice, confidentially.
“Sorrow one o' me knows. He might go for fifty,—he might go for two hundred and fifty! and cheap he'd be of it. He has racing speed over a flat course, and steeplechase action for his fences. With eleven stone on his back—one that can ride, I mean, of course—he 'd challenge all Ireland.”
