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On the north quay, the cab-horses, standing in a line under the shade of the plane-trees each with its head in a nose-bag, are quietly munching their oats, while the rubicund drivers are drinking at the counter of the wine-seller opposite, but all the while keeping a sharp lookout for early customers. The dealers in second-hand books put their boxes on the parapet.
The soft air and the sunshine lent to the men a festive air, to the women a suggestion of love; the bakers' boys deposited their baskets on the benches to run and play with their brethren, the street urchins; the dogs appeared in a great hurry to go somewhere; the canaries hanging in the boxes of the concierges trilled loudly; only the ancient cab-horses kept their usual sedate pace.
At the foot of the castle-hill, along the banks of the Danube was a group of tottering houses; tottering because in spring, when the ice broke up, the Danube roared and dashed among them. Here lived the fiacre drivers. Here were the cab-horses in tumble-down stables.
At the club, at dinners, at the theatre, meeting old friends, taking in new life everywhere, and making new life for everybody. Why, to see him on Broadway waving his hat and calling 'Hillo! to somebody across the street puts even the cab-horses in good humor." She laughed: "I knew it, I knew it! And here on rainy days he has so much to do.
Perhaps not so strange, since one may know how wildly that poor devil had been thinking of her! "I've thought of him so often," the gentle voice went on. "I felt so sorry for him. I never felt sorrier for any one in my life. I was sorry for the poor, thin cab-horses in Paris, but I was sorrier for him. I think it was the saddest sight I ever saw. Do you suppose he still has to do that, Rufus?"
The cab-horses of the Compagnie Générale are usually brought from Normandy, and belong to a specially hardy race, such a one being needed to endure the privations and trials to which a Parisian cab-horse is exposed.
The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform. "A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things." "Any luggage, sir?" said the porter. "And that was the end?" I asked. He seemed to hesitate.
Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be attempted by the amateur pantomimist. "Savoury" is another. B. and I very nearly did ourselves a serious internal injury, trying to express it. We slaved like cab-horses at it for about five minutes, and succeeded in conveying to the mind of the waiter that we wanted to have a game at dominoes.
The birds are heard everywhere in London through that glowing month, and their singing would drown the roar of the omnibuses and the clatter of the cab-horses' hoofs if anything could. The little gardens of the houses back together and form innumerable shelters and pleasaunces for them.
How I hated them as they swaggered along, laughing and joking with one another, looking familiarly on the scene around them, crossing the road in the very teeth of the cab-horses, and not one of them caring or thinking a bit about me. What chance had I among all these? There was not much conceit left in me, I assure you, as I followed meekly in their wake towards Hawk Street that morning.
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