In the interview the next day, between Mr. Brimmington and Mr. Skinner, the aggressiveness was all on Mr. Brimmington’s side, and Mr. Skinner was meek and wore an anxious expression. Mr. Brimmington had, however, changed his point of view. He now realized that sleeping out of Winter nights might be unpleasant, even painful to an aged and rheumatic horse. And, although he had cause of legitimate complaint against the creature, he could no longer bear to think of killing the animal with whom he had shared that cold and silent vigil. He commissioned Mr. Skinner to build for the brute a small but commodious lodging, and to provide a proper stock of provender—commissions which Mr. Skinner gladly and humbly accepted. As to the undertaking to get the horse out of his immediate predicament, however, Mr. Skinner absolutely refused to touch the job. “That horse don’t like me,” said Mr. Skinner; “I know he don’t; I seen it in his eyes long ago. If you like, I’ll send you two or three men and a block-and-tackle, and they can get him out; but not me; no, sir!”
Mr. Skinner devoted that day to repairing damages, and promised on the morrow to begin the building of the little barn. Mr. Brimmington was glad there was going to be no greater delay, when, early in the evening, the sociable white horse tried to put his front feet through the study window.
But of all the noises that startled Mr. Brimmington, in the first week of his sojourn in the farm-house, the most alarming awakened him about eight o’clock of the following morning. Hurrying to his study, he gazed in wonder upon a scene unparalleled even in the History of Prehistoric Man. The boards had been ripped off the curious structure which was supposed to have served the hardy settlers for a wall-bench and a dresser, indifferently. This revealed another structure in the form of a long crib or bin, within which, apparently trying to back out through the wall, stood Mr. Skinner, holding his tool-box in front of him as if to shield himself, and fairly yelping with terror. The front door was off its hinges, and there stood Mrs. Sparhawk wielding a broom to keep out the white horse, who was viciously trying to force an entrance. Mr. Brimmington asked what it all meant; and Mrs. Sparhawk, turning a desperate face upon him, spoke with the vigor of a woman who has kept silence too long.
“It means,” she said, “that this here house of yours is this here horse’s stable; and the horse knows it; and that there was the horse’s manger. This here horse was old Colonel Josh Pincus’s regimental horse, and so provided for in his will; and this here man Skinner was to have the caring of him until he should die a natural death, and then he was to have this stable; and till then the stable was left to the horse. And now he’s taken the stable away from the horse, and patched it up into a dwelling-house for a fool from New York City; and the horse don’t like it; and the horse don’t like Skinner. And when he come back to git that manger for your barn, the horse sot onto him. And that’s what’s the matter, Mr. Skimmerton.”
“Mrs. Sparhawk,” began Mr. Brimmington—
“I ain’t no Sparhawk!” fairly shouted the enraged woman, as with a furious shove she sent the Cumbersome Horse staggering down the doorway mound; “this here’s Hiram Skinner, the meanest man in Pike County, and I’m his wife, let out to do day’s work! You’ve had one week of him—how would you have liked twenty years?”
MR. VINCENT EGG AND THE WAGE OF SIN.
VINCENT EGG and the daughter of his washerwoman walked out of the front doorway of Mr. Egg’s lodging-house into the morning sunlight, with very different expressions upon their two faces.