he also occasionally exhibits a surprising amount of knowledge of current events. when edmund orders him to hire a horse, he replies: "hire you a horse? for ninepence? on jewish new year? in the rain? a bare fortnight after the dreaded horse plague of old london town? with the blacksmiths' strike in its fifteenth week and the dorset horse fetishists fair tomorrow?" his reward for this is to be saddled (literally) with the job of horse himself.