n buy me.'

'No,' I gasped: 'after the extremely candid opinion you were good enough
to express of my riding, I'm surprised that you should even suggest such
a thing.'

'Oh, I will put up with that--you will suit me well enough, I dare say.'

'You must excuse me. I prefer to keep my spare cash for worthier
objects; and, with your permission, I will spend the remainder of the
afternoon on foot.'

'You will do nothing of the sort,' said he.

'If you won't stop, and let me get off properly,' I said with firmness,
'I shall _roll_ off.' There were some promenaders within easy hail; but
how was I to word a call for help, how explain such a dilemma as mine?

'You will only reduce me to the painful necessity of rolling on you,' he
replied. 'You must see that you are to a certain extent in my power.
Suppose it occurred to me to leap those rails and take you into the
Serpentine, or to run away and upset a mounted policeman with you--do
you think you could offer much opposition?'

I could not honestly assert that I did. 'You were introduced to me,' I
said reproachfully, 'as a _kind_ horse!'

'And so I am--apart from matters of business. Come, will you buy, or be
bolted with? I hate indecision!'

'Buy!' I said, with commercial promptness. 'If you will take me back, I
will arrange about it at once.'

It is needless to say that my one idea was to get safely off his back:
after which, neither honour nor law could require me to execute a
contract extorted from me by threats. But, as we were going down the
mews, he said reflectively, 'I've been thinking--it will be better for
all parties, if you make your offer to my proprietor _before_ you
dismount.' I was too vexed to speak: this animal's infernal intelligence
had foreseen my manoeuvre--he meant to foil it, if he could.

And then we clattered in under the glass-roofed yard of the livery
stables; and the job-master, who was alone there, cast his eyes up at
the sickly-faced clock, as if he were comparing its pallor with my own.
'Why, you _are_ home early, sir,' he said. 'You didn't find the 'orse
too much for you, did you?' He said this without any suspicion of the
real truth; and, indeed, I may say, once for all, that this weird
horse--Houyhnhnm, or whatever else he might be--admitted no one but
myself into the secret of his marvellous gifts, and in all his
conversations with me, managed (though how, I cannot pretend to say) to
avoid being overheard.

'Oh, dear no,' I pr