Old Isaac knew better than to pursue the subject any further; and, truth to tell, the old fellow had a spark of his youth’s adventurous spirit lingering about him still, which made him not averse to a change, although he thought the scheme wasteful, imprudent, and extravagant. He looked after his master, strolling leisurely towards the house, and observed very slowly to himself and the stable-cat:
“Market ’Arborow! Market ’Arborow! Five days a week, bullock-fences, and a wet country! Thorns, stubs, cracked heels, and hawful wear-an’-tear of horses! No—I couldn’t have believed it of him!”
Eight-and-forty hours more saw old Isaac stamping drearily about on the wet pavement of that excellent sporting locality. Market Harborough, though perhaps the best head-quarters in the world for fox-hunting, can scarcely be termed a gay or very beautiful town. On a wet, drizzling afternoon in early winter, when twilight begins somewhere about 2.45, with no movable object visible save a deserted carrier’s cart, and a small rain falling, which dulls the red-brick houses while it polishes the paved and slippery streets, it is, doubtless, a city suggestive of repose, not to say stagnation. Isaac’s was a temperament sufficiently susceptible of all unpleasant influences; and he began to wish heartily he hadn’t come. A variety of disadvantages had occurred to him since his arrival. The price of forage and stabling he considered enormous. The conveniences for hot water were not what he was accustomed to at home. Hotspur did by no means feed well in a strange box: the horse had begun to look poorer day by day since he left the dealer’s. And last night The Boy, who had never been from home before, certainly smelt of gin when he came to bed.
This youth—who, if he once had a name, must have long forgotten it, since he was never called anything but “The Boy”—was a continual thorn in the head groom’s side. He had originally been taken solely on Isaac’s recommendation, and had caused that worthy more trouble than all the rest of the establishment put together, horses, pigs, and the Cochin-Chinas to boot. He was a light, lathy lad, with a pretty face; a good horseman, considering his strength, or rather weakness; and had a knack of keeping his hands down: but he owned the usual faults of boyhood—carelessness, forgetfulness, “_imperence_” (as Isaac called it), a great love of procrastination, and general insensibility to the beauty of truth.