I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road to an ordinary buggy. He is tremendously powerful behind, but, like most Hambletonians, he grows a trifle sullen as he gets older. No one can love Rod very much; but no one can help respecting him.
“I wish to wake those,” the yellow horse went on, “to an abidin’ sense o’ their wrongs an’ their injuries an’ their outrages.”
“Haow’s that?” said Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, dreamily. He thought Boney was talking of some kind of feed.
“An’ when I say outrages and injuries”—Boney waved his tail furiously—“I mean ’em, too. Great Oats! That’s just what I do mean, plain an’ straight.”
“The gentleman talks quite earnest,” said Tuck, the mare, to Nip, her brother. “There’s no doubt thinkin’ broadens the horizons o’ the mind. His language is quite lofty.”
“Hesh, sis,” Nip answered. “He hain’t widened nothin’ ’cep’ the circle he’s ett in pasture. They feed words fer beddin’ where he comes from.”
“It’s elegant talkin’, though,” Tuck returned, with an unconvinced toss of her pretty, lean little head.
The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to be extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly stuffed.
“Now I ask you, I ask you without prejudice an’ without favour,—what has Man the Oppressor ever done for you?—Are you not inalienably entitled to the free air o’ heaven, blowin’ acrost this boundless prairie?”
“Hev ye ever wintered here?” said the Deacon, merrily, while the others snickered. “It’s kinder cool.”