"
"Fighting!" said Trove, much interested.
"I was, sor," he asserted, oiling a pinion of the old clock.
"On which side?"
"Inside an' outside."
"With natives?"
"I did, sor; three kinds o' them,--fever, fleas, an' the divvle."
"Give us some more Shakespeare," said the boy, smiling.
The tinker rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and, as he resumed
his work, a sounding flood of tragic utterance came out of him--the
great soliloquies of Hamlet and Macbeth and Richard III and Lear
and Antony, all said with spirit and appreciation. The job
finished, they bade him put up for dinner.
"A fine colt!" said Allen, as they were on their way to the stable.
"It is, sor," said the tinker, "a most excellent breed o' horses."
"Where from?"
"The grandsire from the desert of Arabia, where Allah created the
horse out o' the south wind. See the slender flanks of the
Barbary? See her eye?"
He seemed to talk in that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and
there was in his voice the God-given vanity of bird or poet.
He had caught the filly by her little plume and stood patting her
forehead.
"A wonderful thing, sor, is the horse's eye," he continued. "A
glance! an' they know if ye be kind or cruel.
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