The emperor sent for them, and asked them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old rogues, of course, made the same answer.

'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr.Dale, if you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not buy the tinker's!" "It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good," groaned the parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung away the fragments: one of them hit the donkey on the nose.

If the ass could have spoken Latin he would have said, "Et tu, Brute!" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.
"Gee hup," said the tinker, and he followed the ass.

Then stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the parson's eyes were gazing mournfully on his protege, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the tinker, kindly, "I'll not spite 'un.".