"Oh, bother his shoes!" said Charley, in a voice of great
disappointment. "Why didn't you bring him up without shoes, man, eh?"

"Well, sir, the miller said 'e'd get 'em put on early this mornin',
an' I 'xpect 'e'll be 'ere in 'alf-a-hour at farthest, sir."

"Oh, very well," replied Charley, much relieved, but still a little
nettled at the bare possibility of being late.--"Come along, Harry;
let's go and meet him. He'll be long enough of coming if we don't go
to poke him up a bit."

"You'd better wait," called out the groom, as the boys hastened away.
"If you go by the river, he'll p'r'aps come by the plains; and if you
go by the plains, he'll p'r'aps come by the river."

Charley and Harry stopped and looked at each other. Then they looked
at the groom, and as their eyes surveyed his solemn, cadaverous
countenance, which seemed a sort of bad caricature of the long
visages of the horses that stood around him, they burst into a
simultaneous and prolonged laugh.

"He's a clever old lamp-post," said Harry at last: "we had better
remain, Charley."

"You see," continued Tom Whyte, "the pony's 'oofs is in an 'orrible
state. Last night w'en I see'd 'im I said to the miller, says I,
'John, I'll take 'im down to the smith d'rectly.' 'Very good,' said
John. So I 'ad him down to the smith--"

The remainder of Tom's speech was cut short by one of those