all along of an old bus-horse a-speaking to him friendly-like
as they stood side by side one day. Silly things! they're running all
day long, and never know how far they'll have to go, while I just have
my one journey a day, and then I go back to my stable. You ought to see
that stable. I live up two stories high, and I walk upstairs to bed
every night. What are you laughing at? It's true. There are three
stories at our place, and for staircases to reach the top ones there are
long sloping boards, like those you've seen put for chickens to get into
a hen-house, with little boards across to make steps, only, of course,
ours are a bit bigger than the chickens'. Why, yes, don't laugh; I could
not walk up a chicken-ladder, could I? In our stable we stand in long
rows, a row on each side, with our heels together in the middle, and
heads to the walls, and between the two rows of heels there's just
enough room for a man to pass. Kick? Why, no; only the bad uns do that,
and when they've done it once Tom (that's our stableman) he puts a rope
across their heels to keep 'em in, and to show people they must take
care. There's plenty to eat, and we don't have a bad time at all.
There's eleven of us belong to one omnibus; that's two each time for
five journeys, and one over. Well, in the mornings I go out with old
Sally perhaps, and we trot up to the City and back; it's a matter of
about eight miles each way. We don't have to go fast, but it's stop,
stop, stop whenever a silly old woman wants to get on and get off, and
it's a pull starting again, I can tell you. We know when the conductor
rings the bell that means to start, and off we go without the driver
telling us, and when the conductor rings again that's to stop; it's easy
learnt. At the other end, the City end, we have perhaps a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes, and then we come back. The whole thing doesn't
take much over three hours, and we're done for that day; but our driver
he has to go on again with another pair, and then another, and so five
times there and back. It takes a long time that; but then, of course,
he's only got to sit up on the bus, and he doesn't pull it, and every
second day he is off for two journeys. Once in ten days we get a day
off, a holiday, while the odd horse, number eleven, he takes the bus in
the place of one of us. We have a doctor, too, to ourselves, and when
we're ill we get medicine just as you do. Did you say that you had heard
a bus-horse