His expression was all right. I divide boys into two classes—kind and cruel. This lad was good-hearted whatever else he might be, and he wouldn't hurt a pony.
If he was from the city he spoke my language, and I advanced a bit toward him and stretched out my neck agreeably.
To my amazement he gave a leap backward.
"Oh! excuse me," he stammered, "I'm a bit cut up. I've had a long trip—I didn't know but what you were going to bite."
I curled my lip in a pony smile. Who was he and where did he come from, not to know that a Shetland pony is the soul of good nature. How different he was from those brown-faced young ones outside who looked as if they feared neither man nor beast.
Well, I could do nothing more. It was for him to make the advances, and I examined him more carefully.
He was very much excited. His hands were clenched, his young breast was heaving, and he had red spots over his cheek bones. I believed that he had run up here because he thought he was going to cry.
I have had many young masters and my rôle is to keep quiet at first and see how they treat me. So I just took a nip of hay, and gave him time to get his nerves together for they seemed to be at pretty loose ends.
He was shuddering now. What was the trouble? I looked over my shoulder and saw that someone had been killing a sheep and had hung up its streaked skin on the logs. Well, men have to eat sheep and if they kill them mercifully I suppose there is no harm in it, but what a sensitive lad this must be. I rather liked this tenderness in him. It's hard to die, even if you're only a sheep.
I whinnied sympathetically, and he said quite nicely and as if I were a person, "You have a very good place here."