‘Upton,’ I replied.
‘Country,’ returned Sam. ‘Ah! you will find it different here.’
‘I am afraid so,’ I replied softly, with a sigh.
‘There is a little life here,’ continued Sam, who apparently had not heard my remark. ‘No trotting about for miles and seeing nothing but hedgerows and trees and fields full of grass and corn, tantalizing a hungry horse to death; no brooks to wet your feet and legs by crossing, and not half the flies to bother you. We have flies, of course, but they don’t seem half so hungry as they are in the country—it’s the air, I suppose.’
‘The country air is supposed to give an appetite,’ I remarked, not caring to say too much in praise of the country at present.
‘That is why I hate it,’ growled Sam. ‘Harkaway goes into the country sometimes, and brings me home so horribly sharp that I could eat my halter, but he gives me no more corn: a feed is a feed to him, although it may not be more than half a feed to me. Harkaway is wretchedly stupid; but most men are like him.’
I coughed an assent to this, and Sam went on for awhile grumbling about the short allowance of corn he received, until I thought I might venture to ask for a little information about my master. Sam, to my joy, received my inquiries in a very amiable spirit.
‘Harkaway,’ he said, ‘is a furniture dealer, principally second-hand. He will buy anything, from the lid of a saucepan to an entire house of furniture, and will gladly sell the same if he can realize a fair or an unfair profit. He calls it “turning an honest penny;” but honest as it may be, I have heard him tell the most abominable falsehoods while transacting the most simple acts of business. He will declare, with all the solemnity of a man upon oath, that he gave so-and-so for such a thing, and that he will lose by the transaction, when he knows it did not cost him half the money, and that he will realize a very respectable profit.’
‘It is very sad,’ I said.
‘And it is also absurd,’ returned Sam; ‘for no man believes him—they know as well as he does that he sells for profit, and profit alone; as for any motive of philanthropy, you won’t find such a thing in men of the Harkaway class.’