"Well!" Kitty gave Dan another lump of sugar. "I believe all he wants is more sugar, John Tucker. Just look at him! You are an angelic humbug, Dan dear, and you aren't to have another scrap. So—you'll take Old Crummles to the station, I suppose, John. And I'll take Madam Flynt with Pilot."
Kitty did not look at John Tucker as she said this; they both looked a little conscious. Old Crummles, the third horse, bought by John Tucker (Kitty vowed she would never attempt another horse trade!) was eminently safe and sound, but a trifle dull. Neither Kitty nor John Tucker specially enjoyed driving him.
"Yes, Miss!" said John Tucker. "Three o'clock, I suppose."
Immediately Kitty's heart began to smite her.
"You are as angelic as Dan, John Tucker," she cried. "And I am a selfish Thing! and wicked, too," she added: "I know Madam Flynt is dreadfully afraid of Pilot. She has only driven behind him once, and then she felt that her life hung on the dasher, she told me afterward. So I'll take Old Crummles, John Tucker, dear."
But John Tucker was up in arms at once in defense of his favorite.
"Madam Flynt has no call to be afraid of Pilot," he said gruffly. "Pilot is as clever a hoss as is in this State; and as stiddy, for a young hoss. What I mean, you don't expect a young hoss to reason things out the way an old one does. Take Dan now, or even Crummles, though he hasn't much more sense than a meal-tub; what I mean, you couldn't scare either one on 'em; not if you said 'Boo!' right in their count'nance. They'd toss their head, at least Dan would, and think, 'Well, I ain't a jackass, anyway!' But take a young, spirited hoss like Pilot, and he hasn't had the experience, Miss Kitty, that's all there is to it. You meet a thrashing-machine, say, with Pilot, or an elephant, or something else that it don't belong there, what I mean is. Well, he'll antic up a mite, to express surprise, same as a person would. 'My land!' he says: 'what's that?' Only he says it with his head and his four legs, not havin' language, as you may say."
"John Tucker! you never met an elephant with Pilot!"
"I did, Miss! not one, but three elephants: 'twas that circus used to go through North Cyrus to the City. Well! Pilot warn't only three years old then. He co't sight of them elephants, and he was all over the ro'd, all over the lot, all over the county, in a minute, but he never meant no harm. He was only wonderin', that was all. No, Miss Kitty!" John Tucker shut his jack-knife with a decided snap, and turned away from the stall.
"You take Pilot for Madam Flynt. He'll do anything in creation you tell him, and she'll have a real nice ride. I ain't any too fond of takin' him to the trains anyway," he added. "He gets real annoyed if he has to stand round waitin', and I don't know as I blame him."