“Isn’t he a beauty?” said Bertie. “Mr. Wood says, when he comes to his color he’ll be a chestnut, same as Frank, mother. He’s a real good breed, Mr. Wood and I traced it out; he’s half-brother to Frank and perhaps he’ll be just like Frank.”
The mother had been injured four days, and the Wood boys had taught the colt to drink milk by putting a finger in his mouth and his mouth in the milk.
“Mother,” said Peter, “Mr. Wood has brought up a great many colts by hand, and he said that they ought to be fed a little at a time and often, to do right well. James nor we can’t come from the field to feed him, Maria can’t do it because she’s at school all day. What shall we do?”
“I’ll feed him twice in the forenoon and twice in the afternoon, a little at a time and often is the way, and then you and James can feed him morning, noon and night.”
After a few days’ feeding with her fingers, Mrs. Whitman nailed a teat made of rags and leather to the bottom of the trough, and the colt would suck that. All she had to do then was to pour the milk into the trough.
No one could have witnessed without emotion the wealth of affection lavished upon that colt by James. Much as he loved the children there was always a little feeling of restraint, and a little distance pervading their intercourse on his part. Bertie and Maria would put their arms around his neck and hug him, but he never returned their caresses.
Not so, however, in regard to the colt, the only pet he ever had, the only live thing that had ever called out the childhood feelings and sympathies of his nature so long dormant, and which they now fastened upon and clung to in their entire strength and freshness.
In the morning, before the rest were stirring, he would fondle and talk to it by the half hour. As the little creature grew stronger and playful, and could lick meal and eat potatoes and bread, James would put bread in his waistcoat pocket and lie down on the barn floor, sometimes he would put there maple sugar, then the colt, smelling the delicacies, would root them out with his nose, and as he became earnest get down on his knees and lick the lining of the pocket, and turn it out to get the sugar.
Just back of the house was a piece of grass ground extremely fertile, with a great willow in the centre of it. An acre of this was fenced and reserved for a pasture in which to turn the horses to bait when work pressed, and it was important to have them near at hand. In this pasture James put the colt when he was old enough to feed, and there he would frisk and caper and roll and try to act out the horse, and when tired lie under the great willow, stretched out at full length as though he was dead or sound asleep. Whenever James came in sight he would cry for him, and when the other horses came in from work there would be a vocal concert vigorously sustained on both sides.
“Poor little thing,” said Bert, “he’s lonesome, why don’t you turn him into the pasture with the other horses? He wants somebody to talk with him that can understand his language. I would, James.”