The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels

E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)


Twinkleheels Races With Ebenezer.
Copyright, 1921, by GROSSET & DUNLAP

When Johnnie Green sent him along the road at a trot, Twinkleheels' tiny feet moved so fast that you could scarcely have told one from another. Being a pony, and only half as big as a horse, he had to move his legs twice as quickly as a horse did in order to travel at a horse's speed. Twinkleheels' friends knew that he didn't care to be beaten by any horse, no matter how long-legged.
It's spirit, not size, that counts, Farmer Green often remarked as he watched Twinkleheels tripping out of the yard, sometimes with Johnnie on his back, sometimes drawing Johnnie in a little, red-wheeled buggy.
Old dog Spot agreed with Farmer Green. When Twinkleheels first came to live on the farm Spot had thought him something of a joke.
Huh! This pony's nothing but a toy, he had told the farmyard folk. He's a child's plaything—about as much use as the little wooly dog that lives down by the sawmill.
One trip to the village and back, behind Johnnie Green's glistening new buggy, was enough to change Spot's opinion of the newcomer. Back from the village Twinkleheels came clipping up the road and swung through Farmer Green's front gate as fresh as a daisy. And old Spot, with his tongue lolling out, and panting fast, was glad to lie down on the woodshed step to rest.
My goodness! said Spot to Miss Kitty Cat. This Twinkleheels is the goingest animal I ever followed. He doesn't seem to know the difference between uphill and down. It's all the same to him. I did think he'd walk now and then, or I'd never have travelled to the village behind him.