You can help me, I dare say ?" She assured him that she could--that as she went to Great Hintock her van passed near it--that it was only up the lane that branched out of the lane into which she was about to turn--just ahead.

"Though," continued Mrs.Dollery, "'tis such a little small place that, as a town gentleman, you'd need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don't know where 'tis.

Bedad! I wouldn't live there if they'd pay me to.
Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit." He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were ever and anon brushed over by the horse's tail.
This van, driven and owned by Mrs.Dollery, was rather a movable attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew it well.

The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging here--had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years.

Even his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one side.