Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/81

 Nip. "My throat-lash! D' you remember when you lay down in the sharves last week, waitin' at the piazza?"

"Pshaw! That did n't hurt the sharves. They wuz good an' wide, an' I lay down keerful. The folks kep' me hitched up nigh an hour 'fore they started; an' larfed—why, they all but lay down themselves with larfin'. Say, Boney, if you 've got to be hitched to anything that goes on wheels, you 've got to be hitched with somefin'."

"Go an' jine a circus," said Muldoon, "an' walk on your hind legs. All de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it "woik," New York fashion] jine de circus."

"I am not sayin' any thin' again' work," said the yellow horse; "work is the finest thing in the world."

"'Seems too fine fer some of us," Tedda snorted.

"I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an' enjoy the profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an' not as a machine."

"There ain't no horse that works like a machine," Marcus began.

"There 's no way o' workin' that does n't mean goin' to pole or single—they never put me in the Power-machine—er under saddle," said Rick.

"Oh, shucks! We 're talkin' same ez we graze," said Nip, "raound an' raound in circles. Rod, we hain't heard from you yet, an' you 've more know-how than any span here."

Rod, the off -horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted, like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the haw across his eye, from