“No use,” remarked the Colonel gravely, “it’s deformed—can’t stand up; and out of compassion for it I’ve ordered Jim to knock it in the head. It’ll be better dead than alive.”
Little Sister, with her big, inquisitive eyes, had been taking it all in, as she gravely ate her oatmeal and cream. But the last remark of Grandpa stopped the spoon half way to her mouth. The next instant, unobserved, she had slipped out of her high-chair and flown to the barn.
“I tell you, John,” remarked the old Colonel, “I sometimes think this breeding horses is pure lottery. To think of old Betty, the gamest, speediest mare I ever rode, having such a colt as that; and by Brown Hal, too—the best young pacing horse I ever saw. It makes me feel bad to think of it. Now, take old Betty’s pedigree——”
But the old Colonel never got any further, for piercing screams from Little Sister came from the barn. Uncle John glanced at her empty chair, turned pale with fright, kicked over the two chairs which stood in his way, then his favorite setter dog that blockaded the door, and rushed hatless to the barn. There a pathetic sight met his eyes. A negro stood in old Betty’s stall door with an axe in his hand. In a far corner, on some straw, lay a sorry-looking, helpless colt. But it was not alone, for a three-year-old tot knelt beside it, and held the colt’s head in her lap while she shook her tiny fist at the black executioner, and screamed with grief and anger:
“You shan’t kill this baby colt—you shan’t—you shan’t! Don’t you come in here—don’t you come! How dare you?” And, child though she was, the flash of her keen, blue Rutherford eyes, like the bright sights of the muzzle of two derringers, had awed the negro in the doorway and stopped him in hesitancy and confusion.
“Go away, Jim,” said Uncle John, as he took in the situation. “Come, Little Sister,” he said, “let’s go back to Grandma.”
But for once in her life Uncle John had no influence over the little girl. She was indignant, shocked, grieved. She fairly blazed through her tears and sobs. She would never speak to Grandpa again as long as she lived. She intended her very self to kill Jim just as soon as she “got big enough,” and as for Uncle John, she would never even love him again if he did not promise her the baby colt should not be killed.
“Poor little thing,” she said, as she put her arm around its neck and her tears fell over its big, soft eyes; “God just sent you last night, and they want to kill you to-day.”
Uncle John brushed a tear away himself, and stooped over and critically examined the little filly—for such it was. Little Sister watched him intently for, in her opinion Uncle John knew everything and could do anything. The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, as Uncle John looked up quickly and said in his boyish, jolly way: “Hello, Little Sister, this little filly is all right! Deformed be hanged! She’s as sound as a hound’s tooth—just weak in her front tendons. I’ll soon fix that. No sir, they don’t kill her, Mousey”—Uncle John called her Mousey when he wanted her to laugh.
The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh. “Well, ain’t that just too sweet for anything; and Oh, Uncle John, ain’t she just sweet enough to eat?” And Little Sister danced about, the happiest child in the world.