At this point the Cheap Jack was interrupted by his horse stumbling over a huge, jagged lump of flint, that, with the rest of the road-mending, was a disgrace to a highway of a civilized country. A rate-payer or a horse-keeper might have been excused for losing his temper with the authorities of the road-mending department; but the Cheap Jack’s wrath fell upon his horse. He beat him over the knees for stumbling, and across the hind legs for slipping, and over his face for wincing, and accompanied his blows with a torrent of abuse.
What a moment that must have been for Balaam’s ass, in which she found voice to remonstrate against the unjust blows, which have, nevertheless, fallen pretty thickly ever since upon her descendants and their fellow-servants of ungrateful man! From how many patient eyes that old reproach, of long service ill-requited, yet speaks almost as plainly as the voice that “rebuked the madness of the prophet!”
The Cheap Jack’s white horse had a point of resemblance to the “genteel human beings” of whom he had been speaking. It had “come of a good stock,” and had seen better and kinder days; and to it, also, in its misfortunes, there remained that nobility of spirit which rises in proportion to the ills it meets with. The poor old thing was miserably weak, and sore and jaded, and the flints were torture. But it rallied its forces, gave a desperate struggle, and got the cart safely to the bottom of the hill. Here the road turned sharply, and the horse went on. But after a few paces it stopped as before; this time in front of a small public-house, where trembling, and bathed in perspiration, it waited for its master.
The public-house was a small dark, dingy-looking hovel, with a reputation fitted to its appearance.
A dirty, grim-looking man nodded to the Cheap Jack and George as they entered, and a girl equally dirty, but much handsomer, brought glasses of spirits, to which the friends applied themselves, at the Cheap Jack’s expense. George grew more sociable, and the Cheap Jack reproached him with want of confidence in his friends.
“You’re so precious sharp, my dear,” said the hunchback, who knew well on what point George liked to be flattered, “that you overreaches yourself. I don’t complain—after all the business we’ve done together—that it’s turned slack all of a sudden. You says they’re down on you, and that’s enough for me. I don’t complain that you’ve got your own plans and keeps ’em as secret as the grave, but I says you’ll regret it. If you was a good scholar, George, you could do without friends, you’re so precious sharp. But you’re no scholar, my dear, and you’ll be let in yet, by a worse friend than Cheap John.”
George so bitterly regretted his want of common learning, and the stupidity which made him still slow to decipher print, and utterly puzzled by writing, that the Cheap Jack’s remarks told strongly. These, and the conversation they had had on the hill, recalled to his mind a matter which was still a mystery to the miller’s man.
“Look here, Jack,” said he, leaning across the dirty little table; “if you be such a good scholar, what do M O E R D Y K spell?”
“Say it again, George,” said the dwarf. But when, after that, he still looked puzzled, George laughed long and loudly.
“You be a good scholar!” he cried. “You be a fine friend, too, for a iggerant man. If a can’t tell the first word of a letter, ’tis likely ’ee could read the whole, too!”