The chestnut preserved a too lively recollection of how often the thong had found him out in tender places.
"Have ye e'er a polish put on the Rat?" was what Andy demanded, as he seized a clean bridle, and zealously rubbed the bits in sand.
"Let ye put a polish on him yerself, ye pinkeen." Mike, the head groom, raised a heated face.
"He'd clout me with his hindmost legs," remarked Andy soberly, "unless I had a one to howld him."
"Me gran' bits that was clane an' all." Mike left the bridle for Andy, looked at it, and hinted darkly that it was not the Rat but Andy who would have a polish put on his hide if he did not leave his bethers to themselves. Next moment, as Andy trailed tearfully back to the kennels, old Mike stumped growling to the Rat's stable, directing that the pony should be cleaned properly, so that Miss Gheena wouldn't be at them at the meet.
The Rat was a long-tailed, powerful little beast, with the second thighs of a big horse, no shoulder, and a lean, vicious head. If he had been sixteen hands, he would have carried sixteen stone with ease.
He bit and kicked in the stable and ran away out of it; but few more wonderful hunters had been foaled, and his inches made his evil efforts to hunt futile. They had tried him in harness, to the extreme detriment of two pony carts, and with additions to chips for lighting the fires. If they stopped him kicking, he lay down and slumbered stolidly, but Gheena would not part with him.
"The head of that child will open and let out his brains, the sthate he is in," said Mike, looking after Andy. "If he has flithered up to the kennels onst to-day he has done it twinty times, an' the eyes lightin' out of his head. Will ye have Colleen out second, sir?"
This to Darby, who came limping and crippling across the yard.
"A second horse." Darby glared back at the kennels, and suggested that possibly half a horse might be sufficient with the pack which he had gathered together.