Mr. Sponge, being now on the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion.  Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his right hand, he thus commenced: 

‘Now, Buckram,’ said he, ’I’ll tell you how it is.  I’m deuced hard-up—­regularly in Short’s Gardens.  I lost eighteen ’undred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, the best part of my year’s income, indeed; and I just want to hire two or three horses for the season, with the option of buying, if I like; and if you supply me well, I may be the means of bringing grist to your mill; you twig, eh?’

‘Well, Mr. Sponge,’ replied Buckram, sliding several consecutive half-crowns down the incline plane of his pocket.  ’Well, Mr. Sponge, I shall be happy to do my best for you.  I wish you’d come yesterday, though, as I said before, I jest had two of the neatest nags—­a bay and a grey—­not that colour makes any matter to a judge like you; there’s no sounder sayin’ than that a good oss is not never of a bad colour; only to a young gemman, you know, it’s well to have ’em smart, and the ticket, in short; howsomever, I must do the best I can for you, and if there’s nothin’ in that tickles your fancy, why, you must give me a few days to see if I can arrange an exchange with some other gent; but the present is like to be a werry haggiwatin’ season; had more happlications for osses nor ever I remembers, and I’ve been a dealer now, man and boy, turned of eight-and-thirty years; but young gents is whimsical, and it was a young ‘un wot got these, and there’s no sayin’ but he mayn’t like them—­indeed, one’s rayther difficult to ride—­that’s to say, the grey, the neatest of the two, and he may come back, and if so, you shall have him; and a safer, sweeter oss was never seen, or one more like to do credit to a gent:  but you knows what an oss is, Mr. Sponge, and can do justice to me, and I should like to put summut good into your hands—­that I should.’

With conversation, or rather with balderdash, such as this, Mr. Buckram beguiled the few minutes necessary for removing the bandages, hiding the bottles, and stirring up the cripples about to be examined, and the heavy flap of the coach-house door announcing that all was ready, he forthwith led the way through a door in a brick wall into a little three-sides of a square yard, formed of stables and loose boxes, with a dilapidated dove-cote above a pump in the centre; Mr. Buckram, not growing corn, could afford to keep pigeons.

CHAPTER III

PETER LEATHER

Nothing bespeaks the character of a dealer’s trade more than the servants and hangers-on of the establishment.  The civiler in manner, and the better they are ‘put on,’ the higher the standing of the master, and the better the stamp of the horses.