Page:Black Beauty (1877).djvu/213

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A FRIEND IN NEED.
209

and kind—what horse would not do his best for such a master? Then he took out one of Polly's meat pies, and standing near me, he began to eat it. The streets were very full, and the cabs with the Candidates' colours on them, were dashing about through the crowds as if life and limb were of no consequence; we saw two people knocked down that day, and one was a woman. The horses were having a bad time of it, poor things! but the voters inside thought nothing of that, many of them were half drunk, hurrahing out of the cab windows if their own party came by. It was the first election I had seen, and I don't want to be in another, though I have heard things are better now.

Jerry and I had not eaten many mouthfuls, before a poor young woman, carrying a heavy child, came along the street. She was looking this way, and that way, and seemed quite bewildered. Presently she made her way up to Jerry, and asked if he could tell her the way to St. Thomas's Hospital, and how far it was to get there. She had come from the country that morning, she said, in a market cart; she did not know about the election, and was quite a stranger in London. She had got an order for the Hospital for her little boy. The child was crying with a feeble pining cry. "Poor little fellow!" she said, "he suffers a deal of pain, he is four years old, and can't walk any more than a baby; but the Doctor said if I could get him into the Hospital, he might get well; pray, sir, how far is it? and which way is it?"