Magpie was the fat pony that Mary had first noticed, though Jackdaw certainly was not thin!
“No,” said Mary, “she doesn’t. But she is very pretty,” she went on, feeling—as Magpie just then turned her head as if she was listening—that perhaps it might hurt her to hear herself spoken of as at all lazy; “she is very pretty, and I daresay she is fat because she is good-tempered.”
She looked up in her godmother’s face as she spoke, and again there came the quick smile which seemed to say better than words that Miss Verity understood her thoughts.
“Yes,” she replied, “there is a good deal in that. Magpie is very good-tempered; and poor Jackie is not bad-tempered, only a little bit fiery now and then. Won’t you pat them, Mary? It will be a sort of ‘How-do-you-do?’”
Mary was only too pleased to do so.
“You shall give them each a lump of sugar every morning,” said Miss Verity; and at this the piebalds pricked up their ears.
“I am sure,” thought Mary, “that they understand what godmother says, just as well as the Cooies understand me.”
And in this she was not far wrong.