“It’s all very nice,” I heard her tell the strange groom. “And I want you to give him every attention.” She opened one hand. There was a green piece of paper in it, and he bobbed his head as he took it. Then she opened her other hand—and there was some cracked corn. So it was on a Friday that I came to my new quarters.
It was three days later before I saw Thunderbolt and his master. We all met in the Park.
“They tell me Hector’s left Hart’s,” said Mr. England to Missy. “Now, Miss Sanborn,—you see I’ve found out who you are—it really wasn’t fair of you to go without letting me know about it. We’re both wool people, you must remember.” He spoke jokingly; but he looked a little worried.
Missy straightened in her stirrups (she rides cross-saddle) and tightened my reins. I felt them tremble. “I’ve moved,” she said, “and so, of course, Hector had to come nearer me.”
“I see—of course. Where are you now?”
“At Hawley’s, uptown—a nice stable.”
“Oh, yes.” (Mr. England looked hard at the dog’s head on the butt of his whip.)
There was an awkward silence. Then, “Good-afternoon,” said Missy, and went on.
It didn’t take me long to realise one thing about my new home. It was not so good as the old; in the main comforts it was, but not in little ones. We got two groomings instead of three; the litter was not deep, as at Hart’s; we were not watered so often; there was no more briny hay, and no flaxseed jelly. Several times, too, I saw delivery horses coming up a runway from the basement, and being put to heavy wagons. The horses on my floor, when they went out, were wickedly checked to make them hold up their heads.
Their treatment of me was always the perfection of good stable manners, and among the whole lot there was only one that especially irritated me. He was a bay with black points, one of those under-sized, jack-rabbity little nuisances called a Shetland.