A little light came through the dusty window from a gas-lamp, sufficient to show him Diamond and Ruby with their two heads up, looking at each other across the partition of their stalls. The light showed the white mark on Diamond’s forehead, but Ruby’s eye shone so bright, that he thought more light came out of it than went in. This is what he saw.
But what do you think he heard?
He heard the two horses talking to each other—in a strange language, which yet, somehow or other, he could understand, and turn over in his mind in English. The first words he heard were from Diamond, who apparently had been already quarrelling with Ruby.
“Look how fat you are Ruby!” said old Diamond. “You are so plump and your skin shines so, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“There’s no harm in being fat,” said Ruby in a deprecating tone. “No, nor in being sleek. I may as well shine as not.”
“No harm?” retorted Diamond. “Is it no harm to go eating up all poor master’s oats, and taking up so much of his time grooming you, when you only work six hours—no, not six hours a day, and, as I hear, get along no faster than a big dray-horse with two tons behind him?—So they tell me.”
“Your master’s not mine,” said Ruby. “I must attend to my own master’s interests, and eat all that is given me, and be sleek and fat as I can, and go no faster than I need.”
“Now really if the rest of the horses weren’t all asleep, poor things—they work till they’re tired—I do believe they would get up and kick you out of the stable. You make me ashamed of being a horse. You dare to say my master ain’t your master! That’s your gratitude for the way he feeds you and spares you! Pray where would your carcass be if it weren’t for him?”
“He doesn’t do it for my sake. If I were his own horse, he would work me as hard as he does you.”
“And I’m proud to be so worked. I wouldn’t be as fat as you—not for all you’re worth. You’re a disgrace to the stable. Look at the horse next you. He’s something like a horse—all skin and bone. And his master ain’t over kind to him either. He put a stinging lash on his whip last week. But that old horse knows he’s got the wife and children to keep—as well as his drunken master—and he works like a horse. I daresay he grudges his master the beer he drinks, but I don’t believe he grudges anything else.”
“Well, I don’t grudge yours what he gets by me,” said Ruby.
“Gets!” retorted Diamond. “What he gets isn’t worth grudging. It comes to next to nothing—what with your fat and shine.
“Well, at least you ought to be thankful you’re the better for it. You get a two hours’ rest a day out of it.”
“I thank my master for that—not you, you lazy fellow! You go along like a buttock of beef upon castors—you do.”
“Ain’t you afraid I’ll kick, if you go on like that, Diamond?”
“Kick! You couldn’t kick if you tried. You might heave your rump up half a foot, but for lashing out—oho! If you did, you’d be down on your belly before you could get your legs under you again. It’s my belief, once out, they’d stick out forever. Talk of kicking! Why don’t you put one foot before the other now and then when you’re in the cab? The abuse master gets for your sake is quite shameful. No decent horse would bring it on him. Depend upon it, Ruby, no cabman likes to be abused any more than his fare. But his fares, at least when you are between the shafts, are very much to be excused. Indeed they are.”
“Well, you see, Diamond, I don’t want to go lame again.”
“I don’t believe you were so very lame after all—there!”
“Oh, but I was.”
“Then I believe it was all your own fault. I’m not lame. I never was lame in all my life. You don’t take care of your legs. You never lay them down at night. There you are with your huge carcass crushing down your poor legs all night long. You don’t even care for your own legs—so long as you can eat, eat, and sleep, sleep. You a horse indeed!”
“But I tell you I was lame.”
“I’m not denying there was a puffy look about your off-pastern. But my belief is, it wasn’t even grease—it was fat.”
“I tell you I put my foot on one of those horrid stones they make the roads with, and it gave my ankle such a twist.”
“Ankle indeed! Why should you ape your betters? Horses ain’t got any ankles: they’re only pasterns. And so long as you don’t lift your feet better, but fall asleep between every step, you’ll run a good chance of laming all your ankles as you call them, one after another. It’s not your lively horse that comes to grief in that way. I tell you I believe it wasn’t much, and if it was, it was your own fault. There! I’ve done. I’m going to sleep. I’ll try to think as well of you as I can. If you would but step out a bit and run off a little of your fat!” Here Diamond began to double up his knees; but Ruby spoke again, and, as young Diamond thought, in a rather different tone.
“I say, Diamond, I can’t bear to have an honest old horse like you think of me like that. I will tell you the truth: it was my own fault that I fell lame.”
“I told you so,” returned the other, tumbling against
