12 • BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



waddling in our fettering safety habit-skirts — a 

 silence, as we hope, of admiration, but we have 

 not inquired into it. The ponies were there — a 

 bay of a little over fourteen hands, a chestnut dun 

 of a hand smaller, both ill - fitted by their big 

 saddles, both possessed of a generous contour 

 that told of long summer days of revelling in 

 the young grass, and summer nights of serious 

 gobbling of it when the flies were asleep. Mr 

 Williams the chemist, and ]\Ir Griffiths the iron- 

 monger, stood at their heads, and began a species 

 of funeral oration upon their virtues, and upon the 

 pangs of parting from them ; while an attendant, 

 with his knee against the side of the bay, and his 

 head buried under the flap of the saddle, exerted 

 what strength was in him to overcome the pangs 

 of meeting exhibited by the girths and their 

 buckles : nothing remained for us except to mount, 

 and to trust that we should be spared disaster in 

 the eyes of Welshpool. 



Miss O'Flannigan asked the name of the bay 

 pony, and having ascertained that it was Tom, com- 



