Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“‘I don’t want a saddle, my lord,’ ses I; and up I jumped on a grey horse, named Custard, as I afterwards learnt.

“After I had made a few leaps, I placed shillings between my knees and the ’oss’s sides, and the same under my seat, and to their astonishment cleared the bar without displacing them.

“My lord was evidently delighted. He drew me on one side, out of earshot of the rest, and said, in a whisper, ‘You shall be my steeple-race jockey, but mind, don’t show all you can do at present.’

“‘All right,’ says I.

“‘I had no idea Custard could do so much till you rode him.’

“‘Why, my lord,’ said I, ‘I knowed the grey horse when a baby. I could win all the steeplechases in the country with him.’”

“Why, how came you to know the horse?” inquired Peace.

The gipsy looked at the questioner with one eye only.

“Why, Lord bless us,” he answered, with a merry twinkle in his eye, “father and I knowed every ’oss as was worth knowing in every country we travelled in, and got money by carrying information about ’em from place to place.