“Oh, yes you are, Daddy! I know you are when you smile that way!” cried Mabel, who, with her little brother, had come out to the stable. “Won’t we have fun, George,” she cried gaily, “when we have a pony of our own?”
“We surely will!” said George.
“Don’t be too sure,” returned Mr. Farley, but he could not keep his eyes from laughing, even if his lips did not smile.
Prince soon made friends with the other horses in Mr. Farley’s stable, and they rubbed noses and talked among themselves in a way that all horses have.
And now I must go back to the stock farm to see how Tinkle is getting on, for this story is mostly about him.
“Well,” said Mr. Carter to one of his men a day or two after Prince had been sold and taken to Mr. Farley, “I think it is time we started to train Tinkle, if that little boy George is to have him. We want to get the pony used to having a saddle on his back, and also teach him how to draw a pony cart.”
So Tinkle began to have his first lessons, for animals like horses and dogs, as well as trained animals in a circus, have to be taught lessons, just as you are taught lessons in school. Only, of course, the lessons are different.
Tinkle was driven into the stable yard and while one of the men was patting him and giving him some oats to eat—which Tinkle liked very much—another man slipped some leather straps over the pony’s head. Tinkle did not like this, for never, in all his life, had he felt anything tied on his head before. He tried to run away and shake it off, but he found himself held tightly by a long strap, which was fast to the other straps on his head.
“I wonder what in the world this is?” thought Tinkle, when he found he could not shake off the straps. Afterward he learned it was a halter, which is the rope, or strap, that is used to keep a horse or pony tied in his stall. Sometimes the straps, or ropes, are called a “head-stall.”