The old nag took its own time, and Lars Peter Hansen had no objection. He sat the whole time lightly touching it with his whip, a habit of his, and one without which the horse could not proceed. Should he stop for one moment, while pointing with his whip at the landscape, it would toss its head with impatience and look back—greatly to Ditte's enjoyment.
"Can't it gallop at all?" asked she, propping herself up between his knees.
"Rather, just you wait and see!" answered Lars Peter Hansen proudly. He pulled in the reins, but the nag only stopped, turned round, and looked at him with astonishment. For each lash of the whip, it threw up its tail and sawed the air with its head. Ditte's little body tingled with enjoyment.
"'Tisn't in the mood today," said Lars Peter Hansen, when he had at last got it into its old trot again. "It thinks it's a fraud to expect it to gallop, when it's been taking such long paces all the time."
"Did it say that?" asked Ditte, her eyes traveling from the one to the other.
"That's what it's supposed to mean. It's not far wrong."
Long paces it certainly did take—about that there was no mistake—but never two of equal length, and the cart was rolling in a zigzag all the time. What a funny horse it was. It looked as if it was made of odd parts, so bony and misshapen was it. No two parts matched, and its limbs groaned and creaked with every movement.
They drove past the big estate, where the squire lived, over the common, and still further out into the country which Granny had never seen before.
"But you can't see it now either," corrected Ditte pedantically.
"Oh, you always want to split hairs, 'course I can see it! When I hear you two speak, I see everything quite plainly. 'Tis a gift of God, to live through all this in my old days. But I smell something sweet, what is it?"