CHAPTER III
“YOUR HANDWRITING, SIR”
“Mornin’, sir,” says Mr. Sloper, scenting a customer as he accosts his guest. “Oh, it’s you, is it, Mr. Sawyer? Won’t ye step in and sit down after your walk? Take a glass of mild ale and a crust of bread-and-cheese, or a drop of sherry or anythink?”
“No hunting to-day, Job,” answers the visitor, declining the refreshment; “so I just toddled over to see how you’re getting on, and have a look round the stables; no harm in looking, you know.”
Mr. Sloper’s face assumes an expression of profound mystery. “I’m glad you come over to-day, sir,” he says, in a tone of confidential frankness, “of all days in the year. I’ve a ’orse here, as I should like to ast your opinion about—a gent like you as knows what a ’unter really is. And so you should, Mr. Sawyer, for there’s no man alive takes greater liberties with ’em when they can go and do it. And I’ve got one in that box, as I think, just is more than curious.”
“Would he carry me?” asks Mr. Sawyer, with well-affected indifference, as if he had not come over expressly to find one that would. “Not that I want a horse, you know; but if I saw one I liked very much, and you didn’t price him too high, why I might be induced to buy against next season, perhaps.”
Job took his hands out of his coat-pockets, and spread them abroad, as it were to dry. The action denoted extreme purity and candour.
“No; I don’t think as he ought to carry you, sir,” was the unexpected reply. “Now, I ain’t a-going to tell you a lie, Mr. Sawyer. This horse didn’t ought to be ridden, not the way you take and ride them, Mr. Sawyer; leastways not over such a blind heart-breaking country as this here. He’s too good, he is, for that kind of work; he ought to be in Leicestershire, he ought; the Harborough country, that’s the country for him. He’s too fast for us, and that’s the truth. Only, to be sure, we have a vast of plough hereabout, and I never see such a sticker through dirt. It makes no odds to him, pasture or plough, and the sweetest hack ever I clapped eyes on besides. However, you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Sawyer. I won’t ask you to believe me. You’ve a quicker eye to a horse than I have, by a long chalk, and I’d sooner have your opinion than my own. I would now, and that’s the truth!”
Our purchaser began to think he might possibly have hit upon the animal at last. Often as he had been at the game, and often as he had been disappointed, he was still sanguine enough to believe he might draw the prize-ticket in the lottery at any time. As I imagine every man who pulls on his boots to go out hunting has a sort of vague hope that to-day may be his day of triumph with the hounds, so the oldest and wariest of us cannot go into a dealer’s yard without a sort of half-conscious idea that there must be a trump card somewhere in the pack, and it may be our luck to hold it as well as another’s.
But Sloper, like the rest of his trade, was not going to show his game first. It seems to be a maxim with all salesmen to prove their customers with inferior articles before they come to the real thing. Mr. Sawyer had to walk through a four-stall stable, and inspect, preparatory to declining, a mealy bay cob, a lame grey, a broken-winded chestnut, and an enormous brown animal, very tall, very narrow, very ugly, with extremely upright forelegs and shoulders to match. The latter his owner affirmed to be “an extraordinary shaped un” as no doubt he was. A little playful badinage on the merits of this last enlivened the visit.