"Now then, Paul Beebe, you are next."
Dead silence.
"We'll begin," the teacher raised her voice, "with Paul Be-ee—be-ee," and she stretched out his name like a rubber band. But even then it didn't reach him.
He was not there in the little white schoolhouse at all. In his mind he was back at Pony Ranch and Misty had broken out of her stall and gone tearing down the marsh. And in his fantasy he saw the colt being born, and while it was all wet and new, it was sucked slowly, slowly down into the miry bog. There was no sound, no whimper at all. Just the wind squeaking through the grasses.
Tap! Tap! Miss Ogle rapped her pencil sharply on the desk. "Boys and girls," she said, "you have all heard of people suffering from nightmares. But I declare, Paul Beebe is having a daymare."
The class burst into noisy laughter, and only then did the mad dream break apart.
Back home in Misty's shed all was warm contentment. There was plenty of hay in the manger, good hay with here and there some sweet bush clover, and a block of salt hollowed out from many lickings so that her tongue just fitted. She worked at it now in slow delight, her tongue-strokes stopping occasionally as she turned to watch a little brown hen rounding out a nest in a corner of the stall. Fearlessly the hen let Misty walk around her as if she liked company, and every now and again she made soft clucking sounds.
Out on the marsh Billy Blaze and Watch Eyes, pretending to be stallions, fought and neighed over the little band of mares. Misty looked out at them for a long time, then went to her manger and slowly began munching her hay. The hen, now satisfied with her nest, fluffed out her feathers and settled herself to lay one tiny brown egg.
Contentment closed them in like a soft cocoon.