Mr. Harkaway hesitated, and looked at me. I turned an imploring eye upon him, but I might as well have looked at a brick wall—he was as stupid as the rest of the men, and did not understand me a bit; but the auctioneer came to my rescue.
‘Come, Mr. Harkaway,’ he said, ‘put another pound on—you won’t get such another chance this season; the horse is young, sound, good-tempered, and ready for any amount of work. Shall I say sixty?’
‘Sixty be it,’ said Mr. Harkaway, and the hammer to my great joy fell. The grazier seemed to be rather disappointed—his face expressed that feeling; but he said he was glad he had not bought me, as I was a poor thing at the best, only fit for a dust cart. This hurt me a little, for none of us like to be depreciated even by those we despise; but since then I have heard a story about a fox and some grapes, which sufficiently explains the insulting expressions of the grazier.
As the rest of the sale has no interest to my readers, or any connexion with my life, I will pass it over with the simple declaration that it was a very painful thing to witness. Falsehood and deceit were rampant; not a single horse was honestly represented to the public, and some poor things, long past work, were doctored and stimulated for the occasion, and then solemnly described as horses in excellent condition—fit for any amount of service. Most of the men collected there were too sharp to be deceived; but I am afraid that more than one was that day sadly swindled and deceived by the artful horse-dealer and the glib-tongued auctioneer.
As I have since become thoroughly acquainted with London, I may as well now call places by their proper names; such a course will help those of my friends as know the metropolis to a more definite idea of my wanderings, and assist me in making my story more graphic to the rest of my readers.
Late in the afternoon Mr. Harkaway fetched me from the horse-dealer’s yard, and tying my halter to the tail of a common cart, drove away. There was a big brown horse in the shafts, whom he called ‘Sam’—rather a knowing-looking animal, I thought, and one certainly accustomed to the noisy ways of this bewildering place. We travelled over an immense stone bridge near the Houses of Parliament, and turning to the right went through a maze of street, for the most part poor, dirty, and miserable, making me wonder how any one could live in such tumble-down houses. This was Lambeth, and Lambeth was to be my home; for my new master halted at a house by the corner of a street a shade better than most we had passed through, and shouted out for Jim in such a way that I knew the house must be his own.
LEAVING THE HORSE-DEALER’S YARD.
