“Why, where is that Tinkle pony going now?”
And then Tinkle’s mother would look up and say:
“Oh, dear! That silly little pony will get into trouble! I must go and bring him back.”
Then she would run after Tinkle, and all his fun would be spoiled. Of course the ponies and horses in the meadow used often to run about, kick up their heels and roll over and over on their backs in the soft grass. But this was only because they felt so good and frisky and lively that they simply could not do anything else.
But when the colts ran that way, they nearly always went around in a circle, like a merry-go-round, only bigger, and the father and mother horses thought nothing of that.
“I’m not going to run that way,” said Tinkle to himself. “I’m going far off.”
By this time he was quite away from the other horses. But, as he looked back, he saw them all standing in a circle with their noses close together. Dapple Gray was in the center of the ring, and Tinkle’s father and mother were among those on the outside.
“Dapple is telling another story about how he drew the funny wagon with the chimney on,” thought Tinkle. “I don’t want to hear that again.”
Ponies and horses, you know, can talk among themselves and think, just as we can, only, of course, they can’t think quite as much perhaps, nor as hard. But if they could not talk among themselves how could the mother pony tell the little pony what was good to eat and what not? So, though horses and ponies can’t talk to us in words as we talk to one another, they do speak among themselves.