CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 255 



not like to have Lambkin ? " There are very few people who 

 can't take a good horse, the difficulty generally being about 

 paying for him ; but this did not seem to weigh with Mr. Milksop, 

 who merely said he would be glad to take him — " take him,'' 

 just as he would take a hat from a hatter, a pair of braces from 

 a hosier, or a waistcoat from his tailor. That fine, easy, Can- 

 tabridgian style of doing business not sounding at all like 

 money, and " tick " being at all times abhorrent to the mind of 

 our Captain — at least when he had to give it — and dangerous in 

 the extreme in a case like the present, he let out at once that 

 the price would be a hundred and seventy-five guineas. 



Milksop didn't seem chagrined at all at the information ; 

 indeed, he rather looked upon the price as complimentary to his 

 judgment in horse-flesh, seeing that he pronounced Lambkin 

 first-rate, and he had given a hundred and twent_v for the horse 

 he was on. 



We think the Captain showed great judgment, not only in 

 asking a high price, but in asking it in such a way as to look as 

 if he had measured the horse out to the odd five guineas. Had 

 he asked a hundred and fifty or two hundred, it might have been 

 regarded as a mere random, off-hand, figure-of-speech sort of 

 price ; but a hundred and seventy-five guineas carried con- 

 siderate calculation on the face of it. Time was, when gentle- 

 men used not to think it right to offer each other less for their 

 horses than they asked — they used to leave bartering and bargain- 

 driving to jobbers and dealers — but those days are about 

 past — gentlemen haggle just as hard as the hucksters. To 

 this rule, however, we must add that Mr. Milksop was an 

 exception. His father, old Viscount Creamjug of Papcastle 

 Tower, had instilled good old-fashioned gentlemanly ideas into 

 his mind, and Mr. Milksop invariably acted up to them. 

 Honourable himself, he had no suspicion of dishonesty in 

 others — a fine healthy feeling, but one that is not exactly 

 adapted to this extremely sharp world of ours. Be that as it 



