The little boy stretched up his hand, but he was so short that he had to stand on tiptoe before he could reach my back. I didn’t move, for fear of frightening him; I only turned my head round, and licked his hand.
“Oh, granny, granny! just see! what a dear donkey! he licked my hand!”
“It’s very strange,” said George’s grandmother, “that he should be here all by himself. Go to the village, my dear, and ask whether anybody has lost a donkey. Perhaps his master is very anxious about him.”
George set off at a run, and I trotted after him. When he saw me come up, and then stand still by a mound on the roadside, he climbed up on my back, and said, “Gee up!”
I galloped along, and George was enchanted. When we got to the village inn, George cried, “Whoa back!” and I stopped immediately.
“What do you want, laddie?” said the innkeeper.
“Please, sir, do you know whose donkey this is?”
The innkeeper came out, and looked me all over. “No, my boy, he isn’t mine, and he doesn’t belong to any one I know. Go and ask farther on.”
So George went through the village asking the same question, but nobody had ever seen me before. At last we went back to the good old woman, who was still sitting with her work at the cottage door.