“Do you think he’s not open to persuasion?” said the senior clerk.
“No, I’m sure he’s not.”
“Well, well, it don’t much signify; perhaps we can mount you.” (Charley’s face brightened.) “Go,” he continued, addressing Harry Somerville—“go, tell Tom Whyte I wish to speak to him.”
Harry sprang from his stool with a suddenness and vigour that might have justified the belief that he had been fixed to it by means of a powerful spring, which had been set free with a sharp recoil, and shot him out at the door, for he disappeared in a trice. In a few minutes he returned, followed by the groom Tom Whyte.
“Tom,” said the senior clerk, “do you think we could manage to mount Charley to-morrow?”
“Why, sir, I don’t think as how we could. There ain’t an ’oss in the stable except them wot’s required and them wot’s badly.”
“Couldn’t he have the brown pony?” suggested the senior clerk.
Tom Whyte was a cockney and an old soldier, and stood so bolt upright that it seemed quite a marvel how the words ever managed to climb up the steep ascent of his throat, and turn the corner so as to get out at his mouth. Perhaps this was the cause of his speaking on all occasions with great deliberation and slowness.
“Why, you see, sir,” he replied, “the brown pony’s got cut under the fetlock of the right hind leg; and I ’ad ’im down to L’Esperance the smith’s, sir, to look at ’im, sir; and he says to me, says he ‘That don’t look well, that ’oss don’t,’—and he’s a knowing feller, sir, is L’Esperance though he is an ’alf-breed—”
“Never mind what he said, Tom,” interrupted the senior clerk; “is the pony fit for use? that’s the question.”