FOR SALE— A THOROUGHBRED NAG. 117 



' Dear me !' said I, ' I never heard that before !' 



' Have you not ?' said she. ' It's one of the many marvellous 

 facts science has demonstrated to us. If it were not for that, a 

 small boy like Billy there' (Billy tried to look unconscious, and 

 pulled up his stockings) ' would never be able to lead about a 

 horse and manage him.' 



' Indeed !' I exclaimed. 



Here Billy interposed the irrelevant fact that he had ridden 

 the old gray mare to water and back again, and all alone 

 too. 



' No ; not quite alone, Billy,' suggested Sissy. 



'Well,' quoth Billy, rather sulkily, 'there was only Joe 

 besides ;' who, no doubt, was a considerable figure of authority 

 to the gray mare, if not to Billy. 



It occurred to me afterwards — keen objections or smart 

 answers never do occur to me till the occasion for their applica- 

 tion has slipped past — that if the lens of the horse's eye had this 

 enlarging power, then everything he saw through that lens — not 

 men and little boys alone — must be of monstrous size ! Why 

 does a horse, then, not run away when he sees a fellow-horse ? 

 Ha, ha ! He does shy, though, when he sees a dark bush in the 

 twilight. Can it be that he imagines it a great tree ? 



However, I resolved to be as big and important in the eyes 

 of that mare as her lens would possibly allow. But in a day or 

 two, I must confess, I lost in dignity and self-respect. The mare 

 had run with open mouth at that boy who had lied so well on 

 her behalf Possibly some moral lens she kept somewhere 

 had a more than nullifying effect upon her physical, and had 

 shown her him as a very small boy indeed, as a mere worm of a 

 boy. She struck him down with her fore-feet as soon as he 

 entered her box, and she would have trampled him to death had 

 he not contrived to creep away, very sore, under the manger, 

 where he lay beneath her watchful eye till I entered, and found 

 and released him. I tied her up and began to groom her (I had 

 begun thus to make myself intimately acquainted with her tem- 

 per, and with all her little ways) — I say, I began to groom her. 

 She was rather dirty about the hocks, and I suppose I must 

 have scratched her a little in applying the currycomb there. She 

 struck out a fierce high kick, which just missed me. I instantly 

 dug her in the ribs with the comb. I at once regretted it. She 

 plunged about a little ; and I saw from her evil eye and flattened 

 ears she had taken it in great dudgeon. I had lost whatever 



