Miles joyfully vaulted the rails. Horses, in his life, had been rare. Hardly had he begun this new, odd, and delectable employment, before the little man was seated on the mound of ruin, a luxurious critic.
“Don’t rub so hard.” He stuffed tobacco into a black pipe. “Ye ain’t curryin’. Coat her smooth and even.”
Pleasure gave way, at last, to curiosity.
“What’s it for?” asked the boy.
“Well, now, ’tain’t my fault,” rejoined the stranger candidly. “But our paterons do like to see a white horse. No use o’ talkin’, they do. Now Terry’s smart as the Old Sarpint, but he ain’t altogether a thorough white. Not thorough and complete, he ain’t.”
“Why, he’s a gray!” cried Miles, patting the inquisitive muzzle.
“I give ye credit for that!” approved the man. “To them that didn’t know him well, Terry would seem grayish. I don’t deny they’s mottles, suspicion o’ gray, in places, as you say.”
Behind the speaker, a black shape bounced up out of the ground. A large Newfoundland dog, leaping from the cellar, raced down the bank, frisked about Miles with wide-flung paws, made a kind of salmon leap into the air, turned an amazing somersault, and, rebounding from the grass, perched on the pony’s back. Next moment he sprang down again, and with forepaws on the boy’s shoulders, barked riotously in his face.
“Oh!” cried Miles, dazed and deafened. “So that’s it. You keep a show!”
The little man blew upward a cloud of smoke in the sunlight, and nodded lazily.