There they stood with their angry faces close together as they quarreled over the two seconds. It seemed as if the dispute might end in blows.
“It’s pretty bad, the way you’ve ridden today,” said Lars Berget soberly, when Johnny Blossom came into the stable with Bob. “He is all used up, poor Bobby!”
“He breathes so queerly,” said Johnny Blossom.
“If you only haven’t broken his wind, boy. Pretty risky—to ride him the way you have these last days.”
Oh, dear! How dreadful! At home no one knew a thing about anything, and here he had behaved like this and perhaps hurt Bob. To “break a horse’s wind” was dangerous he knew, because he had heard about one of the livery stable horses that had to be shot on account of being “broken-winded.” But Bob! It was impossible that it should go that way with Bob! Oh, it couldn’t!
“Why, John dear, aren’t you eating anything?” asked Mother that noon.
Oh, he had had enough—plenty.
“It seems to me you are very pale,” pursued Mother. “Are you sure you are not sick?”
Pooh! Far from it. He wasn’t the least bit pale.
Oh, they didn’t know anything about the trouble with Bob, and he didn’t dare to say a word about the racing or anything.