And what fun it was to help Uncle John “fix her up,” as he called it. She brought him the cotton-batting herself and watched him gravely as he made stays for the weak forelegs, and straightened out the crooked little ankles. Finally, when he called Jim, and made him take the little filly up in his arms and carry her into another stall where old Betty stood and held her up to get her first breakfast, the little girl could hardly contain herself. In a burst of generosity she begged Jim’s pardon, and told her Uncle John confidentially that she didn’t intend to kill Jim at all, now; but was going to give him a pair of her Grandpa’s old boots instead.
In return for this, Jim promptly named the filly “Little Sister,” a compliment which tickled the original Little Sister very much.
But having said the little filly was no-’count, the old Colonel stuck to it—refused to notice it or take any stock in it.
“Po’ little thing,” he would say a month after it was able to pace around without help from its stays—“po’ little thing; what a pity they didn’t kill it!”
But Uncle John and Little Sister nursed it, petted it, and helped old Betty raise it; and the next spring they were rewarded by seeing it develop into a delicate-looking, but exceedingly blood-like, nervous, highstrung little miss. Grandpa would surely relent now, but not so. Prejudice, next to ignorance, is our greatest enemy, and the old Colonel looked at the yearling and remarked:
“Po’ little thing—that old Betty should have played off on me like that!” And he turned indifferently on his heel and walked away, whereupon both the filly and the little girl turned up their noses behind the old man’s back.
In the fall that the little filly was three years old the county pacing stakes came off. A thousand dollars were hung up at the end of that race, but greater still, the county’s reputation was at the feet of the conqueror. The old Colonel had entered a big pacing fellow in the race, named Princewood, and it looked like nothing could beat him. The big fellow had been carefully trained for two seasons by a local driver, and had already cost his owner more than he was worth. “But it’s the reputation I am after, sir,” the Colonel would say to the driver—“the honor of the thing. My farm has already taken it twice; I want to take it again.”
Now, Uncle John was quite a whip himself, and the old Colonel had failed to notice how all the fall he had been giving Betty’s filly extra attention, with a hot brush on the road now and then. The old man, wrapped up as he was in Princewood’s wonderful speed, had even failed to notice that Uncle John had frequently called for his light road wagon, and he and Little Sister, now six years old, had taken delightful spins down the shady places in the by-ways, where nobody could see them, behind the high-strung little filly, and that often, at supper, when Grandpa would begin to brag about Princewood’s wonderful speed, Uncle John would wink at Little Sister, and that little miss would have to cram her mouth full of peach preserves to keep from laughing out at the table and being sent supperless to bed.
There was a big crowd on the day of the race—it looked like all the county was there. The field was a large one, for the purse was rich and the honor richer—“and Princewood is a prime favorite,” chuckled the old Colonel, as he stood holding a little girl’s hand near the grandstand.
But the little girl was very quiet. For once in her life “the cat had her tongue.” Now, anybody half educated in child ways would have seen this tot clearly expected something to happen. If the old Colonel hadn’t been so busy talking about Princewood he might have seen it, too.