d be careful about brushing against the walls;
but still it will keep the wind and rain out when it is finished.
Cullingworth talks of our building a new house for ourselves; but as
we have three large ones already there does not seem to be any pressing
need.

Talking about horses, we had no end of a fuss here the other day.
Cullingworth got it into his head that he wanted a first-class riding
horse; and as neither of the carriage ones would satisfy him, he
commissioned a horse dealer to get him one. The man told us of a charger
which one of the officers in the garrison was trying to get rid of. He
did not conceal the fact that the reason why he wished to sell it was
because he considered it to be dangerous; but, he added, that Captain
Lucas had given L150 for it, and was prepared to sell it at seventy.
This excited Cullingworth, and he ordered the creature to be saddled and
brought round. It was a beautiful animal, coal black, with a magnificent
neck and shoulders, but with a nasty backward tilt to its ears, and an
unpleasant way of looking at you. The horse dealer said that our yard
was too small to try the creature in; but Cullingworth clambered up upon
its back and formally took possession of it by lamming it between the
ears with the bone handle of his whip. Then ensued one of the most
lively ten minutes that I can remember. The beast justified his
reputation; but Cullingworth, although he was no horseman, stuck to him
like a limpet. Backwards, forwards, sideways, on his fore feet, on
his hind feet, with his back curved, with his back sunk, bucking and
kicking, there was nothing the creature did not try. Cullingworth was
sitting alternately on his mane and on the root of his tail--never by
any chance in the saddle--he had lost both stirrups, and his knees were
drawn up and his heels dug into the creature's ribs, while his hands
clawed at mane, saddle, or ears, whichever he saw in front of him. He
kept his whip, however; and whenever the brute eased down, Cullingworth
lammed him once more with the bone handle. His idea, I suppose, was to
break its spirit, but he had taken a larger contract than he could carry
through. The animal bunched his four feet together, ducked down his
head, arched his back like a yawning cat, and gave three convulsive
springs into the air. At the first, Cullingworth's knees were above the
saddle flaps, at the second his ankles were retaining a convulsive
grip, at the third he flew forward li