“Well, fetch up your nag, my old cock; you’re jist the lark I wanted to get hold of. I am perhaps a _leetle_, jist a _leetle_, of the best man at a horse swap, that ever stole _cracklins_ out of his mammy’s fat-gourd. Where’s your _hoss_?” “I’ll bring him presently; but I want to examine your horse a little.” “Oh! look at him,” said the Blossom, alighting and hitting him a cut, “look at him. He’s the best piece of _hoss_ flesh in the thirteen united universal worlds. There’s no sort o’ mistake in little Bullet. He can pick up miles on his feet and fling ’em behind him as fast as the next man’s _hoss_, I don’t care where he comes from. And he can keep at it as long as the sun can shine without resting.” During this harangue, little Bullet looked as if he understood it all, believed it, and was ready at any moment to verify it. He was a horse of goodly countenance, rather expressive of vigilance than fire; though an unnatural appearance of fierceness was thrown into it, by the loss of his ears, which had been cropped pretty close to his head. Nature had done but little for Bullet’s head and neck; but he managed, in a great measure, to hide their defects, by bowing perpetually. He had obviously suffered severely for corn; but if his ribs and hip bones had not disclosed the fact, _he_ never would have done it; for he was, in all respects, as cheerful and happy as if he commanded all the corn-cribs and fodder-stacks in Georgia. His height was about twelve hands; but as his shape partook somewhat of that of the giraffe, his haunches stood much lower. They were short, strait, peaked and concave. Bullet’s tail, however, made amends for all his defects. All that the artist could do to beautify it, had been done; and all that horse could do to compliment the artist, Bullet did. His tail was nicked in superior style, and exhibited the line of beauty in so many directions, that it could not fail to hit the most fastidious taste in some of them. From the root it dropped into a graceful festoon; then rose in a handsome curve; then resumed its first direction; and then mounted suddenly upwards like a cypress knee, to a perpendicular of about two and a half inches. The whole had a careless and bewitching inclination to the right.