rother-in-law jogging
along in his little cart. They lifted Diamond in, and got up themselves,
and away they went, "home again, home again, home again," as Diamond
sang. But he soon grew quiet, and before they reached Sandwich he was
fast asleep and dreaming of the country at the back of the north wind.

CHAPTER XIV. OLD DIAMOND

AFTER this Diamond recovered so fast, that in a few days he was quite
able to go home as soon as his father had a place for them to go. Now
his father having saved a little money, and finding that no situation
offered itself, had been thinking over a new plan. A strange occurrence
it was which turned his thoughts in that direction. He had a friend in
the Bloomsbury region, who lived by letting out cabs and horses to the
cabmen. This man, happening to meet him one day as he was returning from
an unsuccessful application, said to him:

"Why don't you set up for yourself now--in the cab line, I mean?"

"I haven't enough for that," answered Diamond's father.

"You must have saved a goodish bit, I should think. Just come home with
me now and look at a horse I can let you have cheap. I bought him only a
few weeks ago, thinking he'd do for a Hansom, but I was wrong. He's got
bone enough for a waggon, but a waggon ain't a Hansom. He ain't got go
enough for a Hansom. You see parties as takes Hansoms wants to go like
the wind, and he ain't got wind enough, for he ain't so young as he once
was. But for a four-wheeler as takes families and their luggages, he's
the very horse. He'd carry a small house any day. I bought him cheap,
and I'll sell him cheap."

"Oh, I don't want him," said Diamond's father. "A body must have time
to think over an affair of so much importance. And there's the cab too.
That would come to a deal of money."

"I could fit you there, I daresay," said his friend. "But come and look
at the animal, anyhow."

"Since I lost my own old pair, as was Mr. Coleman's," said Diamond's
father, turning to accompany the cab-master, "I ain't almost got the
heart to look a horse in the face. It's a thousand pities to part man
and horse."

"So it is," returned his friend sympathetically.

But what was the ex-coachman's delight, when, on going into the stable
where his friend led him, he found the horse he wanted him to buy was
no other than his own old Diamond, grown very thin and bony and
long-legged, as if they, had been doing what they could to fit him for
Hansom work!

"He ain