"One side of his
mouth's hard and the other soft."
"The difficulty being," I suggested as we lurched across the road into
the other ditch, "to discover which is which.... Now you're straight.
We'd better trot. It's only a one-day match."
Haynes used the ancient whip, which had as much effect as tickling a
rhinoceros with a feather.
"Goad him with a penknife," suggested Ansell unfeelingly.
"There must be some way," said Haynes. "Because they _do_ trot, you
know."
"Speaking as one ignorant amateur to another," I asked, "isn't the right
thing to pull gently on the reins and then slacken? You go on doing it
till the animal gets your meaning. Try it."
Haynes tried it, and Bucephalus stopped dead. Repetition of the
treatment simply produced a tendency to back.
"For heaven's sake don't lose any of the ground we've gained," said
Ansell. "Let's get on, if only at a walk."
"We shall have to tow him," decided Haynes. He got out and hauled at the
bridle, but Bucephalus refused to budge.
"This," said Ansell, becoming suddenly business-like, "is where the Boy
Hero modestly but firmly takes charge. Jump in."
He picked up the reins and, though he apparently did nothing in
particular with them, Bucephalus came to life at once and broke into a
lumbering trot.
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