“Doctor! we had the doctor,” replied Wetun, “but he could do nothin’ for him.”
“Nothin’ for him!” retorted Billy; “why not?”
“Because he’s rotten,” replied Wetun.
“Rotten! how can that be?” asked our friend, adding, “I only bought him the other day!”
“If you open ‘im you’ll find he’s as black as ink in his inside, rejoined the groom, now getting up in the stall and rubbing his knees.
“Well, but what’s that with?” demanded Billy. “It surely must be owing to something. Horses don’t die that way for nothing.”
“Owing to a bad constitution—harn’t got no stamina,” replied Wetun, looking down upon the dead animal.
Billy was posed with the answer, and stood mute for a while.
“That ‘oss ‘as never been rightly well sin he com’d,” now observed Joe Bates, the helper who looked after him, over the heads of the door-circle.
“I didn’t like his looks when he com’d in from ‘unting that day,” continued Tom Wisp, another helper.