of many sorts and sizes, and a herd of bright-hooded, gayly blanketed
horses gave variety to the human crowd that soaked and steamed in the
fine, slowly falling rain. A draught-horse was every three minutes
driven into their midst with tedious iteration as he slowly drew baskets
of coal up from the sloop unloading at the wharf, and each time they
closed solidly upon his retreat as if they never expected to see that
horse again while the world stood. They were idle ladies and gentlemen
under umbrellas, Indians and habitans taking the rain stolidly erect or
with shrugged shoulders, and two or three clergymen of the curate type,
who might have stepped as they were out of any dull English novel. These
were talking in low voices and putting their hands to their ears to
catch the replies of the lady-passengers who hung upon the rail, and
twaddled back as dryly as if there was no moisture in life. All the
while the safety-valves hissed with the escaping steam, and the boat's
crew silently toiled with the grooms of the different horses to get the
equipages on board. With the carriages it was an affair of mere muscle,
but the horses required to be managed with brain. No sooner had one of
them placed his fore feet on the gangway plank than he protested by
backing up over a mass of patient Canadians, carrying with him half a
dozen grooms and deck-hands. Then his hood was drawn over his eyes, and
he was blindly walked up and down the pier, and back to the gangway,
which he knew as soon as he touched it. He pulled, he pranced, he shied,
he did all that a bad and stubborn horse can do, till at last a groom
mounted his back, a clump of deck-hands tugged at his bridle, and other
grooms, tenderly embracing him at different points, pushed, and he was
thus conveyed on board with mingled affection and ignominy. None of the
Canadians seemed amused by this; they regarded it with serious composure
as a fitting decorum, and Mr. Arbuton had no comment to make upon it.
But at the first embrace bestowed upon the horse by the grooms the
colonel said absently, "Ah! long-lost brother," and Kitty laughed; and