“I think it has put life into him, for he works just as though he was working on a wager all the time.”
CHAPTER XV.
SOMETHING TO PUT IN THE CHEST.
That night as Mr. Whitman, accompanied by Peter and Bertie, reached the door-step, they were met by George Wood who said their mare had broken her leg, and they were going to kill her, that she had a colt four days old, and his father would sell it for a dollar.
“Father,” shouted Bertie, “won’t you let James have it, and keep it for him till it is grown up? You know Peter and I have each of us a yoke of steers, and James ought to have something. Will you, father?”
“James has no dollar to pay for a colt.”
“I’ll lend it to him, and he can pay me when he sells his potatoes.”
“But how do you know he wants a colt? Perhaps he had rather have the dollar.”
“Oh! I know he does, of course he does; you know how much he thinks of a horse, father, there’s nothing he loves like a horse. He’s got no father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, and it will be something for him to love just like a brother. He’s out to the barn, I’ll ask him, and if he says he wants him will you let him keep him?”
“He won’t say so, if he wants him ever so much, but you have a sort of freemasonry by which you reach each other’s thoughts, and if you think he would like very much to have him and pay a dollar for him, you may get him.”
It is to be presumed that James wanted the colt; for when work was done, Peter, Bertie and Maria all got into the wagon that was half filled with straw, and in the edge of the evening brought home the colt.