A WALKING DELEGATE
"The gentleman talks quite earnest," said Tuck, the mare, to Nip, her brother. "There 's no doubt thinkin' broadens the horizons o' the mind. His language is quite lofty."
"Hesh, sis," Nip answered. "He hain't widened nothin' 'cep' the circle he 's ett in pasture. They feed words fer beddin' where he comes from."
"It 's elegant talkin', though," Tuck returned, with an unconvinced toss of her pretty, lean little head.
The yellow horse heard her, and struck an attitude which he meant to be extremely impressive. It made him look as though he had been badly stuffed.
"Now I ask you—I ask you without prejudice an' without favour,—what has Man the Oppressor ever done for you? Are you not inalienably entitled to the free air o' heaven, blowin' acrost this boundless prairie?"
"Hev ye ever wintered here?" said the Deacon, merrily, while the others snickered. "It 's kinder cool."
"Not yet," said Boney. "I come from the boundless confines o' Kansas, where the noblest of our kind have their abidin'-place among the sunflowers on the threshold o' the settin' sun in his glory."
"An' they sent you ahead as a sample?" said Rick, with an amused quiver of his long, beautifully groomed tail, as thick and as fine and as wavy as a quadroon's back hair.
"Kansas, sir, needs no advertisement. Her native sons rely on themselves an' their native sires. Yes, sir."
Then Tweezy lifted up his wise and polite old head. His affliction makes him bashful as a rule, but he is ever the most courteous of horses.
[56]
