"He's just out on view," said Darby; "and don't slip get just behind him or you might lose him and think him was a clothes-line."
Mrs. Weston stepped forward, gave a quick bird-like glance, and began: "Of all the——" Then she stopped suddenly and looked again.
"He is a very nice horse, isn't he?" she said brightly.
"There isn't gap in the country you couldn't slip through on that fellow," remarked Darby, ignoring Keefe's furious eyes. "And you ought to keep him always tail foremost, Mrs. Weston; his is so pretty."
Violet Weston thought it was a love of a tail, very happily. He was not at all like the horses they rode in Australia, she added, much finer-looking; and she thought he might be very nice to run after hounds on.
"Slattery did it often," said Darby tersely to himself and hobbling off.
Keefe, relieved by his absence, now explained the difficulty of getting any horses just at present. People who had very good hunters hid them away for fear they would be commandeered, and all the sixty and seventy-pound screws were sold.
"The most lamentable sight ever I seen," observed Phil, taking the bay for a little stroll down the yard and back again. "The teeth dhragged out of the youngsters to make them the right age, an' ould sthagers taken that ye'd offered oats to feed 'em on it, sthone blind I seen them bought, an' sore with spavins, an' broken-winded. Old car horses ripped out of the shafts an' soult for chargers. Runaways, stoopers, sthaggerers, the sorra a charnst a man would have to run away at all with the craythurs sint out for them," concluded Phil sorrowfully.
"He—has his—forelegs a little near together, hasn't he?" inquired Violet Weston dubiously.
"The way he can't throw dust up betune them," said Phil softly, something very like a wink trembling on his left eyelid.