POOR BLOSSOM.
CHAPTER I.
MY PLACE OF BIRTH.
The first thing that I remember is a green field enclosed by a stiff fence, where I was running about by my mother’s side. I cannot call to mind the earliest days of my existence, but I am sure that I was not more than a fortnight old when my mother gave me my first lesson in life—a lesson I have never forgotten. My mother was a fine bay mare, the property of Mr. Bayne, a farmer, who seems to have treated her very kindly; indeed I have never heard any horse speak better of a master than my mother was accustomed to speak of the man who owned her.
‘He has never laid a whip upon me,’ she would say with a proud toss of her head; ‘he has a heart far too kind for that sort of thing, and he knows I always do my best—and what horse can do more, I wonder.’
But to return to the lesson she gave me. I was ambling by her side when Mr. Bayne entered the field, and my mother, as she usually did, ran up to him to be caressed and fed with some trifling luxury, such as a slice of carrot or bit of sugar. I kept by her side until we reached him; then I, purely from playfulness, turned and kicked at him, lightly—you know—not by any means in a way to hurt him, I assure you.
‘Woa there,’ shouted Mr. Bayne; ‘vicious are you, my youngster? the mother’s blood don’t seem to run in you.’
He said nothing more, but having fed and stroked my mother, he went out of the field, and left us together. Then I received the lesson to which I have alluded.
‘How very wrong of you,’ she said, ‘to kick at so good and kind a master.’
‘It was only in play,’ I replied, hanging my head and feeling rather foolish.
‘I know it was so,’ she returned, ‘but it was wrong of you nevertheless. Some men are so stupid that they do not know play from vice, in a horse, and only few of them seem really to understand us. They often reprove us when we endeavour to do right, and you will be beaten if you do not curb your propensity to play.’