“You kind of bump!” he gasped, as the horse galloped on. “I wonder—will—I—fall off!”
Peter snorted. He had forgotten how it felt to be running free, and perhaps he was pretending he was a young colt again. He paid no more attention to the small boy on his back than if Sunny Boy had been a fly.
Around and around the field they tore. Jimmie’s shouts had brought Grandpa, and together the two watched in terrible anxiety.
“I’d get on Paul and chase ’em, but Peter can outrun him any day!” Jimmie almost sobbed. “Say! I know what will do it. You wait, sir.”
He ran up to the barn and came back with a peck measure of corn. Paul saw the long yellow ears and whinnied with pleasure.
“You don’t get any,” Jimmie informed him. “Lucky they hadn’t had their dinner,” he said to Grandpa. He stood out from the fence and rattled the measure invitingly, and whistled.
Now Peter was not a colt, however much he might enjoy pretending, and he was getting tired of his gallop. Also he was hungry, and he had heard Paul whinny. So when Jimmie whistled, the old, familiar whistle he always gave when he came in the barn at feeding time, Peter turned and stared. Yes, there he stood, down at the other end of the field, and yes, he had corn with him.
Peter slowed down to a gentle run, then to a half trot, and finally came walking at his usual gentle gait straight up to Jimmie and Grandpa.
“Sunny, Sunny, what will you do next?” groaned Grandpa, lifting him down. “I hope your mother didn’t see this—she would be frightened to death.”
“It didn’t hurt me,” urged Sunny Boy, beginning to wonder if he had done wrong. “I is bumped a little, but I wasn’t afraid, Grandpa. Was Jimmie?”