d.
"Sir," said he to me, "I must give you what you ask; Symmonds, take
possession of the animal for me," said he to the other jockey, who
attended him. "You will please to do no such thing without my consent,"
said I; "I have not sold him." "I have this moment told you that I will
give you the price you demand," said his lordship; "is not that
sufficient?" "No," said I, "there is a proper manner of doing
everything--had you come forward in a manly and gentlemanly manner to
purchase the horse, I should have been happy to sell him to you, but
after all the fault you have found with him, I would not sell him to you
at any price, so send your friend to find up another." "You behave in
this manner, I suppose," said his lordship, "because this fellow has
expressed a willingness to come to your terms. I would advise you to be
cautious how you trust the animal in his hands; I think I have seen him
before, and could tell you . . ." "What can you tell of me?" said the
other, going up to him, "except that I have been a poor dicky-boy, and
that now I am a dealer in horses, and that my father was lagged; that is
all you could tell of me, and that I don't mind telling myself: but there
are two things they can't say of me, they can't say that I am either a
coward, or a screw either, except so far as one who gets his bread by
horses may be expected to be; and they can't say of me that I ever ate up
an ice which a young woman was waiting for, or that I ever backed out of
a fight. Horse!" said he, motioning with his finger tauntingly to the
other; "what do you want with a horse, except to take the bread out of
the mouth of a poor man--to-morrow is not the battle of Waterloo, so that
you don't want to back out of danger, by pretending to have hurt yourself
by falling from the creature's back, my lord of the white feather--come,
none of your fierce looks--I am not afraid of you." In fact, the other
had assumed an expression of the deadliest malice, his teeth were
clenched, his lips quivered, and were quite pale; the rat-like eyes
sparkled, and he made a half spring, _a la_ rat, towards his adversary,
who only laughed. Restraining himself, however, he suddenly turned to
his understrapper, saying, "Symmonds, will you see me thus insulted? go
and trounce this scoundrel; you can, I know." "Symmonds trounce me!"
said the other, going up to the person addressed, and drawing his hand
contemptuously over his face; "why, I beat Symmonds in