Beggars on horseback; a riding tour in North Wales (1895) (14782308702)

Identifier: onhorsebabeggars00rossrich (find matches)
Title: Beggars on horseback; a riding tour in North Wales
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Ross, Martin, 1862-1915 Somerville, E. . (Edith none), 1858-1949
Subjects: Wales, North -- Description and travel
Publisher: Edinburgh, London : W. Blackwood and sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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182 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. with the bone - setting canter of the groomscarriage—a landscape always pretty, never start-ling, laden in the bright hot morning with thetrance of June, and with the tenderness of itsunconscious farewell to us. That one-sided fore-knowledge of parting pervaded all things, andindued with romance the two inquiring faces—one bay with a white spot, the other drab witha white blaze—that gazed at us across the emptymangers in unwearied expectancy of oats. AtRuabon Junction, during a long, hot interval ina siding, we fed them with penny buns and withan armful of hay stolen by Miss OFlanniganfrom a cart that stood outside a public-houseadjacent to our siding. It was an unusual mani-festation of sentiment, but it was accepted on itsmerits ; and the lumps of warm dough were chewedand gulped with much fuss and detail, and the haysnatched from our hands with a voracity that weventured to hope was a politeness. When, atOswestry, the final moment came, they suffered
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A final salute. i84 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. with dignity the farewell endearments of theiraunts, staring through their loopholes with com-plete stolidity, after the manner of horse-flesh.Their liquid brown eyes expressed nothing be-yond a desire for more penny buns; and whenMiss OFlannigan attempted, with a good dealof personal effort, to imprint a final salute uponher Toms ruddy brown muzzle, he snorted withapprehension and withdrew to the extremestlimits of his cable. It was impossible to explainto them that we found some difficulty in partingwith them, friends but of a fortnight though theywere. And in parting, too, from the other features ofthat fortnight,—from the leisure and indepen-dence, the fatigue and inconvenience, the life ex-panding unintellectually in long solitudes of opensky, after shrivelling for three months in themerely brain activity of London. Travellingtowards Chester in the familiar monotony of arailway carriage, the eye noted discontentedly the BEGGARS ON HORSE