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‘Well, you ‘ave took a voilent fancy to the ‘orse and no mistake, sir,’ he remarked.

‘I never crossed a handsomer creature,’ I said; which was hardly a prudent remark for an intending purchaser, but then, there was the animal himself to be conciliated.

‘I don’t know, really, as I can do without him just at this time of year,’ said the man. ‘I’m under-‘orsed as it is for the work I’ve got to do.’

A sweet relief stole over me: I had done all that could be expected of me. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ I said, preparing to dismount. ‘That is a disappointment; but if you can’t there’s an end of it.’

‘Don’t you be afraid,’ said Brutus, ‘he’ll sell me readily enough: make him an offer, quick!’

‘I’ll give you thirty guineas for him, come!’ I said, knowing well enough that he would not take twice the money.

‘I thought a gentleman like you would have had more insight into the value of a ‘orse,’ he said: ‘why, his action alone is worth that, sir.’

‘You couldn’t let me have the action without the horse, I suppose?’ I said, and I must have intended some joke.

It is unnecessary to prolong a painful scene. Brutus ran me up steadily from sum to sum, until his owner said at last: ‘Well, we won’t ‘aggle, sir, call it a hundred.’

I had to call it a hundred, and what is more, it was a hundred. I took him without a warranty, without even a veterinary opinion. I could have been induced to take my purchase away then and there, as if I had been buying a canary, so unaccustomed was I to transactions of this kind, and I am afraid the job-master considered me little better than a fool.

So I found myself the involuntary possessor of a Houyhnhnm, or something even worse, and I walked back to my rooms in Park Street in a state of stupor. What was I to do with him? To ride an animal so brutally plainspoken would be a continual penance; and yet, I should have to keep him, for I knew he was cunning enough to outwit any attempt to dispose of him. And to this, Love and Ambition had led me! I could not, after all I had said, approach Diana with any confidence as a mere pedestrian: the fact that I was in possession of a healthy horse which I never rode, would be sure to leak out in time, and how was I to account for it? I could see no way, and I groaned under an embarrassment which I dared not confide to the friendliest ear. I hated the monster that had saddled himself upon me, and looked in vain for any mode of escape.

I had to provide Brutus with stabling in another part of the town, for he proved exceedingly difficult to please: he found fault with everything, and I only wonder he did not demand that his stable should be fitted up with blue china and mezzotints. In his new quarters I left him for some days to his own devices: a course which I was glad to find, on visiting him again, had considerably reduced his arrogance. He wanted to go in the Row and see the other horses, and it did not at all meet his views to be exercised there by a stableman at unfashionable hours. So he proposed a compromise. If I would only consent to mount him, he engaged to treat me with forbearance, and pointed out that he could give me, as he expressed it, various ‘tips’ which would improve my seat. I was not blind to the advantages of such an arrangement. It is not every one who secures a riding-master in the person of his own horse; the horse is essentially a generous animal, and I felt that I might trust to Brutus’s honour. And to do him justice, he observed the compact with strict good faith. Some of his ‘tips,’ it is true, very nearly tipped me off, but their result was to bring us closer together; our relations were less strained; it seemed to me that I gained more mastery over him every day, and was less stiff afterwards.