XX 



OF AN ASS 



MY wife has discovered a little steed for us. 

 He is called Jack, which is just as it should 

 be, because his second name is Ass, and he is a 

 sort of honorary member of the Bunting family 

 close neighbours of ours. Among beasts of 

 draught this ass is surely one of the highly 

 fortunate. He lives a life which has hitherto 

 been lived only by the horses of sporting fiction. 

 Roland, who carried a certain prosy-poetic, 

 indomitable fellow from Ghent to Aix or from 

 Aix to Ghent, may have been allowed in recogni- 

 tion of his services to spend thus the evening 

 of his days. And in the last chapter of The 

 Starting Gate we shall certainly find the dear 

 old Druid cropping the lush grass of the Manor 

 paddock or accepting sugar from the dainty hand 

 of his mistress while the Squire stands by and 

 recounts for the seventeen-hundredth time the 

 story of the noble brute's last race, when, lame 

 in the near hind, he won the Cup for his owner, 



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