Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/204

184 turned out of Holywll Street; and I 'm perfectly sure that you were then on a mouse-colour; and this is a bay."

"A bay!" echoed Mr. Bouncer; "why where are your eyes, old boy? there must be some defect of vision. This is the mouse-coloured hack. What 'll you bet? a bottle of blacking?"

"I could lay you any odds that this is certainly a bay," said Charles Larkyns.

"Now, Giglamps, you shall decide!" said Mr. Bouncer, who was riding between the other two. "Is this a bay or a mouse-colour?"

"Oh, it is undoubtedly a mouse-colour!" said Verdant, judicially; as though he was an authority on all that related to horses.

"Well!" cried Charles Larkyns, "then all I can say is, I never saw a mouse-coloured before!"

"But, did you ever see one behind?" asked little Mr. Bouncer, as he took his hack a few paces in advance, and then slowly turned him round, in such a way that the clipped and unclipped sides were distinctly seen, and the subject of the dispute was at once made clear. Charles Larkyns declared that he would write a parody on the fables of "The Chameleon" and "The Knights and the Shield." It was evident that there could be two sides to every question, including that of a horse's colour.

Turning over this circumstance in his mind, little Mr. Bouncer rapidly made his way to the Barham Station. Intelligence had been received that the line was now cleared, and the train for London was expected every minute. He went to the sliding panel in the wooden screen, where, as in a frame, he saw the head and shoulders of the youthful and unwholesome-looking