Part 20 (1/2)

”Two and a penny,” he remarked, bitterly. ”I'll sell it for a third of what it cost me.”

”You have put your money into the wrong machine,” I suggested.

”Well, I know that!” he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I should have left him. ”It isn't losing the money I mind so much; it's getting this d.a.m.n thing, that annoys me. If I could find that idiot Id ram it down his throat.”

We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.

”There are people like that,” he broke out, as we turned, ”people who will go about, giving advice. I'll be getting six months over one of them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once.” (I judged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don't know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) ”It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped. I'd had him out to gra.s.s all the winter, and one day in the early spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had to go to Amersham on business. I put him into the cart, and drove him across; it is just ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.

”A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, 'That's a good pony of yours.'

”'Pretty middling,' I says.

”'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.

”I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling. I reckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.

”I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was still there. 'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.

”Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning. 'Well, I've got to get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any patent way of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I am.'

”He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you start.'

”'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'

”'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale. I know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set. A pint of old ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and not hurt himself.'

”I don't know what it is about this cla.s.s of man. One asks oneself afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his head into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to them.

I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out. About half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there was a good deal of chaff.

”'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of them.

'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother. That's always the result of a gla.s.s of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'

”'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch water. Put a head on it for him.'

”'Ain't you got a cigar for him?' says a third.

”'A cup of coffee and a round of b.u.t.tered toast would do him a sight more good, a cold day like this,' says a fourth.

”I'd half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself; it seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a four-year-old pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he reached out his head, and lapped it up as though he'd been a Christian; and I jumped into the cart and started off, amid cheers. We got up the hill pretty steady.

Then the liquor began to work into his head. I've taken home a drunken man more than once and there's pleasanter jobs than that. I've seen a drunken woman, and they're worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want to have anything more to do with so long as I live. Having four legs he managed to hold himself up; but as to guiding himself, he couldn't; and as for letting me do it, he wouldn't. First we were one side of the road, and then we were the other. When we were not either side, we were crossways in the middle. I heard a bicycle bell behind me, but I dared not turn my head. All I could do was to shout to the fellow to keep where he was.

”'I want to pa.s.s you,' he sang out, so soon as he was near enough.

”'Well, you can't do it,' I called back.

”'Why can't I?' he answered. 'How much of the road do YOU want?'

”'All of it and a bit over,' I answered him, 'for this job, and nothing in the way.'