All the way home he was singing, so I knew what thoughts were passing through his mind. The longing for his mother amounted to a passion. His childhood had been so repressed that now with the prospect of his mother's presence either in the body or out of it, and normal life with his father outside a city, he acted like a boy that had a joyous fountain of delight springing up inside him.
He took a song all these backwoodsmen sang about, "Over the Mountain," and changed it to suit his purpose.
Instead of a traveller on horseback, he was a boy on ponyback, and he was looking for his mother, stolen by wicked fairies.
I think he really knew at this time that his mother was not dead, but for the life of me I could not be sure of it.
Children are pretty clever at concealing their inner thoughts, and though I am reckoned a pretty wise pony, I never have fully understood all the workings of this young master's picturesque mind.
I loved him, though. That was enough for me, and I listened with deep pleasure to his gay singing until we reached the Farm. Arriving there, he jumped off my back and went soberly up to the veranda, where Big Chief was having a meeting of the Calf and Pig Club, composed of neighbourhood boys and girls.
After they went away, there was a very jolly big supper party and later on some quaint folk dances on the lawn.
Then they had a bear dance. Mr. Devering and Mr. Macdonald dressed up in bearskins and frolicked about the grass in the electric light.
They were very amusing as Mother and Father Bear, but when my young master came on as a saucy cub who would not mind his parents, the fun became so fast and furious between the big bears and the little one that everybody shrieked with laughter.
Occasionally little bear cub glanced at the wrist watch on his paw and I knew that even in the midst of his gambolling he was keeping an eye on the time. He wished to be early to bed in order to be early to rise.