Joey the Smith stood at the forge one day, trimming a red-hot horse-shoe, when I rode up and dropping the reins over Snowball’s head, sang out “Morning, Joey!”
Joey placed the chisel on the shoe with nice calculation of the amount he wanted to snip off; his assistant boy swung the big hammer, and an inch cube of red-hot iron dropped off. Then Joey looked up with, what seemed to me, a conflict of innocent surprise and stifled amusement in his face. The boy also turned to look, and—the insignificant incident is curiously unforgettable—trod upon the piece of hot iron. “Look where you’re standing,” said Joey reproachfully, as the smoke and smell of burning skin-welt rose up; and the boy with a grunt of disgust, such as we might give at a burned boot, looked to see what damage had been done to his ‘unders.’ It gave me an even better idea of a nigger’s feet than those thorn digging operations when we had to cut through a solid whitish welt a third of an inch thick.
Joey grinned openly at the boy; but he was thinking of Snowball.
“I wonder you had the heart, Joey, I do indeed!” I said, shaking my head at him.
“You would have him, lad, there was no refusin’ you! You arst so nice and wanted him so bad!”
“But how could you bear to part with him, Joey? It must have been like selling one of the family.”
“’Es, Boy, ’es! We are a bit stoopid—our lot! Is he still such a fool, or has he improved any with you?”
“Joey, I’ve learned him—full up to the teeth. If he stops longer he will become wicked, like me; and you would not be the ruin of an innocent young thing trying to earn a living honestly, if he can?”
“Come round behind the shop, Boy. I got a pony’ll suit you proper!” He gave a hearty laugh, and added “You can always get what you arsk for—if it ain’t worth having. Moril! Don’t arsk! I never offered you Snowball. This one’s different. You can have him at cost price; and that’s an old twelve month account! Ten pounds. He’s worth four of it! Salted an’ shootin’! Shake!” and I gripped his grimy old fist gladly, knowing it was jonnick and ‘a square deal.’
That was Mungo Park—the long, strong, low-built, half-bred Basuto pony—well-trained and without guile.