Of course he
contradicted himself twenty times over, but when you know what is
likely to be true you can test a man's admissions. And Fred could
not but reckon his own judgment of a horse as worth something.
The farmer had paused over Fred's respectable though broken-winded
steed long enough to show that he thought it worth consideration,
and it seemed probable that he would take it, with five-and-twenty
pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond. In that case Fred,
when he had parted with his new horse for at least eighty pounds,
would be fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction, and would
have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the bill;
so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at
the utmost be twenty-five pounds. By the time he was hurrying
on his clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the importance
of not losing this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had
both dissuaded him, he would not have been deluded into a direct
interpretation of their purpose: he would have been aware that those
deep hands held something else than a young fellow's interest.
With regard to horses, distrust was your only clew. But scepticism,
as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come
to a standstill: something we must believe in and do, and whatever
that something may be called, it is virtually our own judgment,
even when it seems like the most slavish reliance on another.
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