“I—I don’t know.”
“You ought to know, then! See here! There’s a thorn in this surcingle. That’s all how it happened!”
“That—little thing? And that big horse?”
The groom has ridden up by this time, and Steenie turned upon him swiftly. “See here, man! I found this in the band!”
“Well. What of it?”
“That’s what made him act up.”
“That is too small to have been felt.”
“I think not. See?” The child struck the brier sharply into the flesh of her own brown little hand, and a red flush followed the wound. “That has hurt him ever since he went out. Bob says nothing’s so sensitive as a horse; and then something frightened him; and then he—ran away. So would I,—if anything kept doing this all the time!” And again she attacked her own skin,—now so energetically that the blood oozed out; at which she turned and clasped the soft nostrils of the thorough-bred before her with a tender pitying touch, and laid her own bonny face caressingly against the face of the beast, who stood in motionless enjoyment of this new sympathy.
Nobody knew that a fourth person had observed this scene till a grave voice quietly asked: “Little girl, who are you?”
Then the curly head was reluctantly lifted from its resting-place, and a pair of radiant eyes were raised toward the porch where the questioner stood. “I’m only Steenie Calthorp.”