CHAPTER XL.
Poor Ginger.
One day, whilst our cab and many others were waiting outside one of the Parks, where music was playing, a shabby old cab drove up beside ours. The horse was an old worn-out chestnut, with an ill-kept coat and bones that shewed plainly through it, the knees knuckled over, and the forelegs were very unsteady. I had been eating some hay, the wind rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creature put out her long thin neck and picked it up, and then turned round and looked about for more. There was a hopeless look in the dull eye that I could not help noticing, and then, as I was thinking where I had seen that horse before, she looked full at me and said, "Black Beauty, is that you?"
It was Ginger! but how changed! The beautifully arched and glossy neck was now straight, and lank, and fallen in, the clean straight legs and delicate fetlocks were swelled; the joints were grown out of shape with hard work; the face, that was once so full of spirit and life, was now full of suffering, and I could tell by the heaving of her sides, and her frequent cough, how bad her breath was.
