“It means,” she said, “that this here house of yours is this here horse’s stable; _and the horse knows it_; and that there was the horse’s manger. This here horse was old Colonel Josh Pincus’s regimental horse, and so provided for in his will; and this here man Skinner was to have the caring of him until he should die a natural death, and then he was to have this stable; and till then the stable was left to the horse. And now he’s taken the stable away from the horse, and patched it up into a dwelling-house for a fool from New York City; and the horse don’t like it; and the horse don’t like Skinner. And when he come back to git that manger for your barn, the horse sot onto him. And that’s what’s the matter, Mr. Skimmerton.” [Illustration] “Mrs. Sparhawk,” began Mr. Brimmington-- “I _ain’t_ no Sparhawk!” fairly shouted the enraged woman, as with a furious shove she sent the Cumbersome Horse staggering down the doorway mound; “this here’s Hiram Skinner, the meanest man in Pike County, and I’m his wife, let out to do day’s work! You’ve had one week of him--how would you have liked twenty years?” MR. VINCENT EGG AND THE WAGE OF SIN. Mr. Vincent Egg and the daughter of his washerwoman walked out of the front doorway of Mr. Egg’s lodging-house into the morning sunlight, with very different expressions upon their two faces. Mr. Vincent Egg, although he was old and stout and red-nosed and shabby in his attire, wore a look that was at once timorous, fatuous, and weakly mendacious; a look that tried to tell the possible passer-by that his red nose and watery eyes bloomed and blinked in the smiles of Virginie. Virginie, although she was young and pretty and also thin of face and poverty-stricken of garb, wore a look which told you plainly and most honestly beyond a question, that she had no smiles for Mr. Egg or for any one else. They walked down the middle of the street side by side, but _that_ they could not very well help doing, for the street was both narrow and dirty, and the edges of the stone gutter down its midway offered the only clean foothold in its entire breadth. As they walked on together, Mr. Egg made a few poor-spirited attempts to start up a gallant conversation with the girl; but she made no response whatever to his remarks, and strode on in dark-faced silence, her empty wash-basket poised between her lank right hip and her thin right elbow. Mr. Egg hemmed and cleared a husky throat, and employed both his unsteady hands in setting his tall, shabby silk hat upon his head in such a manner that its broad brim might keep the sunlight out of his eyes. [Illustration]