"He told you to take the nigh side," shouted one of the boys to me.
"He's all right," said Phaeton. "I'd advise you to hurry home before your breakfast gets cold. We'll run this horse without any more help."
"Run him, will you?" answered the boy derisively. "That's what I'm waiting to see. He'll run so fast the grass'll grow under his feet."
"If there was a hot breakfast an inch ahead of your nose," said another of the boys, addressing Phaeton, "it'd be stone cold before you got to it."
Notwithstanding these sarcastic remarks, our horse was now perceptibly moving. He had begun to walk alone in the middle of the road, and—what at the time seemed to me very fortunate—he was going in the direction of the pasture.
"Can't you make him go faster, Fay?" said Ned.
"Not in this condition," said Phaeton. "You can't expect a horse without a saddle on him to make very good time."
"What difference does that make?" said I.
"You read the book, and you'll see," said Phaeton, in that tone of superior information which is common to people who have but just learned what they are talking about, and not learned it very well. "All the directions in the book are for horses with saddles on them. There isn't one place where it tells about a horse with just a blanket strapped over his back. If Uncle Jacob had let me take the saddle, and if I had a good pair of wheel-spurs, and a riding-whip, and a gag-bit in his mouth, you wouldn't see me here. By this time I should be just a little cloud of dust, away up there beyond the brewery. This animal shows marks of speed, and I'll bet you, if he was properly handled, he'd trot way down in the thirties."
So much good horse-talk, right out of a standard book, rather awed me. But I ventured to suggest that I could cut him a switch from the hedge, which Dobbin could certainly be made to feel, though it might not be so elegant as a riding-whip.