Admirably groomed, Kit' - Mr Brass is patting the pony - 'does you

great credit - amazingly sleek and bright to be sure. He literally looks

as if he had been varnished all over.'

Kit touches his hat, smiles, pats the pony himself, and expresses his

conviction, 'that Mr Brass will not find many like him.'

'A beautiful animal indeed!' cries Brass. 'Sagacious too?'

Bless you!' replies Kit, 'he knows what you say to him as well as a

Christian does.'

Does he indeed!' cries Brass, who has heard the same thing in the

same place from the same person in the same words a dozen times,

but is paralysed with astonishment notwithstanding. 'Dear me!'

I little thought the first time I saw him, Sir,' says Kit, pleased with the

attorney's strong interest in his favourite, 'that I should come to be as

intimate with him as I am now.'

Ah!' rejoins Mr Brass, brim-full of moral precepts and love of virtue. 'A

charming subject of reflection for you, very charming. A subject of

proper pride and congratulation, Christopher. Honesty is the best

policy. - I always find it so myself. I lost forty-seven pound ten by

being honest this morning. But it's all gain, it's gain!'

Mr Brass slyly tickles his nose with his pen, and looks at Kit with the

water standing in his eyes. Kit thinks that if ever there was a good

man who belied his appearance, that man is Sampson Brass.

'A man,' says Sampson, 'who loses forty-seven pound ten in one

morning by his honesty, is a man to be envied. If it had been eighty

pound, the luxuriousness of feeling would have been increased. Every

pound lost, would have been a hundredweight of happiness gained.

The still small voice, Christopher,' cries Brass, smiling, and tapping

himself on the bosom, 'is a-singing comic songs within me, and all is

happiness and joy!'

Kit is so improved by the conversation, and finds it go so completely

home to his feelings, that he is considering what he shall say, when

Mr Garland appears. The old gentleman is helped into the chaise with

great obsequiousness by Mr Sampson Brass; and the pony, after

shaking his head several times, and standing for three or four minutes

with all his four legs planted firmly on the ground, as if he had made

up his mind never to stir from that spot, but there to live and die,

suddenly darts off, without the smallest notice, at the rate of twelve

English miles an hour. Then, Mr Brass and his sister (who has joined

him at the door) exchange an odd kind of smile - not at all a pleasant

The Old Curiosity Shop