"He has very likely got bruised." The captain eagerly grabbed his hat from the clavichord and went with him.
Outside by the sleigh they stood, thinly clothed in the severe frost, and felt over the hamstring and lifted up the left hind foot of the bay. For a final examination, they went into the stable.
When they came out there was a veritable wild dispute.
"I tell you, you might just as well have said he had glanders in his hind legs. If you are not a better judge of curing men than you are of horses, I wouldn't give four shillings for your whole medical examination."
"That brown horse of yours, Jäger—that is a strange fodder he takes. Doesn't he content himself with crib-splinters?" retorted the doctor, slyly bantering.
"What? Did you see that, you—knacker?"
"Heard it, heard it; he gnawed like a saw there in the crib. He has cheated you unmercifully—that man from Filtvedt, you know."
"Oh, oh, in a year he will be tall enough for a cavalry horse. But this I shall concede, it was a good trade when you got the bay for sixty-five."
"Sixty and a binding dram, not a doit more. But I would not sell him, if you offered me a hundred on the spot."