A WALKING DELEGATE
favoured my splint; even little Rick he don't know what it 's cost me to keep my end up sometimes; an' I 've fit my temper in stall an' harness, hitched up an' at pasture, till the sweat trickled off my hooves, an' they thought I wuz off condition, an' drenched me."
"When my affliction came," said Tweezy, gently, "I was very near to losin' my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy, suh."
Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don't think he quite understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.
"I 've been there too, Rod," said Tedda. "Open confession 's good for the soul, an' all Monroe County knows I 've had my experriences."
"But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson"—Tweezy looked unspeakable things at the yellow horse—"that pusson who has insulted our intelligences comes from Kansas. An' what a ho'se of his position, an' Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the halter, concern gentlemen of our position. There 's no shadow of equal'ty, suh, not even for one kick. He 's beneath our contempt."
"Let him talk," said Marcus. "It 's always interestin' to know what another horse thinks. It don't tech us."
"An' he talks so, too," said Tuck. "I 've never heard anythin' so smart for a long time."
Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:
[75]
