Then Ben would take the curry-comb, and smooth the shaggy coat, and Dobbin would seem as pleased as a little child at being made so nice and respectable for the jaunt to the city.
“You must hold up your head,” Sally would say, “and let the city horses see that you are well-bred, and have nothing to be ashamed of; and, whatever you do, Dobbin, try and keep a sure footing in the slimy streets. ‘Tis dreadful to fall down in such mud and mire! I should be sorry if you came home with your nice coat soiled, and maybe an inward hurt that would be harder to get over.”
Sally did not know what a fine moral there was to her little speech, for every body that goes from the freshness and purity of a country home to the slippery places of the great and wicked city.
CHAPTER IX. GARDEN RICHES.
LITTLE Sally stood in the midst of the tomato-vines, eating a great scarlet “love-apple,” as she would insist upon calling it.
“That is what it used to be called,” said Gill. “You can just as well say it, if you like.”
The child smacked her lips over the delicious fruit. “‘Tis better than an apple when one is thirsty,” she said. “The leaf looks like the potato-leaf, does it not, Gill?”
“And well it may,” the Scotchman answered; “it belongs to the same genus. The potato and the tomato and the eggplant, are near relations.”