"All right, maw," he quavered.
"An' raymimber this, too," she went on. "There niver yit was wan Doolin thet wasn't on the square. Hoss racin' ain't prayin', an' all them as races hosses ain't like the Colonel. But there niver was wan Doolin yit thet wasn't on the level. Mind yew ain't the fust crook in the clan, er else yew needn't niver come home t' the Blue Grass ter look yewr maw in the face."
Thin and gaunt and gray-haired, she stood in the biting wind that fought to tear her shawl from her bony shoulders. For a moment she stared, stern and dry-eyed, at the boy. Somehow he had never seemed so tiny before.
"Will yew raymimber thet?" she demanded at last. Tim dropped his eyes in boyish embarrassment.
"I reck'n," he said.
His mother drew her shawl tightly about her shoulders and departed without more ado.
The life of a stable-boy on a great breeding-farm is not all beer and skittles, whatever that may be. His principal business is to look sharp and do as he is told and never forget. It's always early to rise, before dawn in the winter time, and often late to bed, if some of the priceless thoroughbreds are ailing. Moreover, the tongues of stable foremen are sharp, and their hands are heavy.
Tim made his mistakes. Once, after they came to trust him at The Vale, on a sharp morning when he was giving King Faraway, the head of the stud, his morning gallop on the pike, he fell to dreaming. A little brook ran under a wooden bridge built for carriage use. But to one side there was a ford through which people drove in summer to give their horses drink. The brook was solid ice that morning, but Tim, not thinking, turned King Faraway into the ford. The great horse slipped and fell.
Tim sprang up from the far side of the brook with the blood gushing from a nasty cut on his forehead. But he didn't think of that. Was King Faraway hurt?
He walked the three miles back to The Vale, the stallion limping behind him, and at the stable he told the truth and got a thrashing.