If you can get an answer from them at all, it is generally delivered in such a way as to show that the answerer thinks you are what they call 'chaffing them,' asking them what you know.
These farms serve the double purpose of purveyors to the London stables, and hospitals for sick, overworked, or unsaleable horses.

All the great job-masters and horse-dealers have these retreats in the country, and the smaller ones pretend to have, from whence, in due course, they can draw any sort of an animal a customer may want, just as little cellarless wine-merchants can get you any sort of wine from real establishments--if you only give them time.
There was a good deal of mystery about Scampley.

It was sometimes in the hands of Mr.Benjamin Buckram, sometimes in the hands of his assignees, sometimes in those of his cousin, Abraham Brown, and sometimes John Doe and Richard Roe were the occupants of it.
Mr.Benjamin Buckram, though very far from being one, had the advantage of looking like a respectable man.

There was a certain plump, well-fed rosiness about him, which, aided by a bright-coloured dress, joined to a continual fumble in the pockets of his drab trousers, gave him the air of a 'well-to-do-in-the-world' sort of man.

Moreover, he sported a velvet collar to his blue coat, a more imposing ornament than it appears at first sight.
To be sure, there are two sorts of velvet collars--the legitimate velvet collar, commencing with the coat, and the adopted velvet collar, put on when the cloth one gets shabby.
Buckram's was always the legitimate velvet collar, new from the first, and, we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world.