Thish-yer Smily had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you
know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and he use to win money on that horse, for all she
was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind.
They use to give her two or three hundred yards’ start, and then pass her under way; but always at the
fag-end of the race she’d get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and spraddling up, and
scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the
fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and
blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher
it down.