“Would Neptune do it?”
“Neptune?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you remember asking me one day if I would sell him? and I will, papa, if it is to somebody who will treat him kindly and love him.”
“Kate, my dear, perhaps I may be compelled to take your offer; but we will see about it; and if I do, you shall have the finest pony—”
“O, papa! don’t,” cried Kate. “I don’t want any other pony, not as long as I live; it’s so dreadful to love anything that can be bought and sold. I will try never to do it again,” and Kate made excuse to leave the room, fearing that she should spoil her offer by crying. Kate had been a long time in coming to the point of being willing to give Neptune up; but now that she had made the sacrifice in so many words, she was resolved not to cry about it—not if she could help it; but feeling very greatly the need of more sympathy than Neptune could give, and not wishing to make known her grief to her mother, she carried her little moan over to Mrs. Dobson; and finding her all alone in the house, Kate had a good cry, and felt better by the time Harry came in; so much better, indeed, that she looked up, smiling at him, and said: “Neptune is going some day before long. I’ve told papa he might sell him; and please, I don’t want anybody to say they are sorry for me, ’cause it isn’t myself that I’m sorry for, but Neptune”; and Kate bit her lip to keep it from quivering into another spasm of crying.
“Who is going to buy Neptune?”
The question came from Harry, who somehow did not seem to feel half as much sympathy for Kate as that young girl thought he ought to feel; and a bit of indignation, more at him than at the talked-of sale, escaped her lips in the words,
“O, anybody who wants him!”
“Why, Kittie, my Clover, didn’t you tell me not ten minutes ago that Neptune was to be sold only to somebody who would be ever so kind to him?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a bit of self-assertion quite unusual in her manner, if not in her words.
“Anybody could promise, but I should not be there to see the kindness or the cruelty. O, I wonder what makes God let men be so cruel! I pray and pray, every time I see a horse whipped and jerked, and made to carry too big a load, that some awful thing may happen to the men who do it! O, I wouldn’t touch a cent of money, not if I starved, that was made out of the horse-railroads in New York—such dreadful, dreadful loads as the poor things are made to carry, and everything! I don’t think it is a bit worse—”