OVER THE CROSS ROAD
Philip could be heard barking madly in the garage and Meg volunteered to go and let him out. The others were too much absorbed in the horse and sleigh to offer to release the dog.
"What's the name of the horse?" asked Dot.
"I forgot to inquire," Sam answered. "So you may call him anything you like. He lives at the livery stable and you might name him after his master, Walter Rock. Call him Walt for short, you know."
Philip, dancing and barking, came running over the snowy lawn and Meg raced after him.
"The horse's name is Walt," Dot informed her importantly. "I think he looks kind, don't you, Meg?"
"Of course he is a kind horse," said Meg. "He's a pretty color, too."
Walt was a spotted horse, brown and white, not a polka-dot horse, of course, but with what Meg called a "pattern" of oddly shaped slashes of white on his brown coat.
"He must be a foulard horse," Meg commented as the children climbed into the soft clean straw which filled the box of the sleigh.
Sam shouted with laughter and Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly and Norah, who were all standing in the doorway to see them start, called out to ask what the joke was about.