“Yes,” said Jack.
“A real boy, that wants no winding up?” inquired the old woman.
“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Jack; “but I am a real boy, certainly.”
“Ah!” she replied. “Well, I thought you were, by the way Boney spoke to you. How frightened you must be! I wonder what will be done to all your people for driving, and working, and beating so many beautiful creatures to death every year that comes? They’ll have to pay for it some day, you may depend.”
Jack was a little alarmed, and answered that he had never been unkind himself to horses, and he was glad that Boney bore no malice.
“They worked him, and often drove him about all night in the miserable streets, and never let him have so much as a canter in a green field,” said one of the women; “but he’ll be all right now, only he has to begin at the wrong end.”
“What do you mean?” said Jack.
“Why, in this country,” answered the old woman, “they begin by being terribly old and stiff, and they seem miserable and jaded at first, but by degrees they get young again, as you heard me reminding him.”
“Indeed,” said Jack; “and do you like that?”
“It has nothing to do with me,” she answered. “We are only here to take care of all the creatures that men have ill used. While they are sick and old, which they are when first they come to us—after they are dead, you know—we take care of them, and gradually bring them up to be young and happy again.”