“There!” said Mrs. Leslie, triumphantly, “you’re beaten again, Johnny Leslie!”
“I don’t care,” said Johnny, panting, and very red in the face, “you’re only a foot ahead this time, mamma, and at that rate, I’ll be two feet ahead, next time.”
The dinner-bell rang while Mrs. Leslie was smoothing her tumbled hair and straightening her dress.
“I have an errand that will take me almost to the park this afternoon, Johnny,” she said, at dinner, “Tiny is going with me, and if you’d like to go, I will call for you at three, and ask to have you excused from the writing hour, and then we can have a whole hour in the park before we need come home to supper. Shall I?”
This was an extremely pleasing arrangement, and when the time arrived, a happy party took seats in the horse car, for the park was more than two miles from Mr. Leslie’s house, and the last part of the way was decidedly an “up-grade.”
“Oh mamma!” exclaimed Tiny, “how will these two poor horses pull such a car full of people up that steep hill? It’s too much for them! Suppose we get out and walk?”
Tiny was always on the watch about the comfort of horses and dogs and cats.
Just then the car stopped, and a third horse, that had been standing patiently under a tree near the sidewalk, was fastened to the pole in front of the other two, and, with his help, the car went easily up the slope.
“That’s nice,” said Tiny, looking greatly relieved, “I didn’t remember that they kept an extra horse here, mamma; how good it must make him feel, when the poor tired horses stop and say, ‘That hill’s a great deal too steep for us to drag this great heavy car up it’; and then he says, ‘Hold on, I’m coming. You can do it easily, with me to help you!’”