"Can you hold his head or are you afraid of that too? You deserve to have him bite your hands off." He addressed Miss Wannop: "Can you?" She said: "No! I'm afraid of horses. I can drive any sort of car: but I'm afraid of horses." He said: "Very proper!" He stood back and looked at the horse: it had dropped its head and lifted its near hind foot, resting the toe on the ground: an attitude of relaxation.
"He'll stand now!" he said. He undid the girth, bending down uncomfortably, perspiring and greasy: the girth-strap parted in his hand.
"It's true," Mrs. Wannop said. "I'd have been dead in three minutes if you hadn't seen that. The cart would have gone over backwards . . ."
Tietjens took out a large, complicated, horn-handled knife like a schoolboy's. He selected a punch and pulled it open. He said to the driver:
"Have you got any cobbler's thread? Any string? Any copper wire? A rabbit wire, now? Come, you've got a rabbit wire or you're not a handy man."
The driver moved his slouch hat circularly in negation. This seemed to be Quality who summons you for poaching if you own to possessing rabbit wires.
Tietjens laid the girth along the shaft and punched into it with his punch.
"Woman's work!" he said to Mrs. Wannop, "but it'll take you home and last you six months as well . . . But I'll sell this whole lot for you to-morrow."
Mrs. Wannop sighed:
"I suppose it'll fetch a ten pound note . . ." She said: "I ought to have gone to market myself."