"Oh, it is a dreadful thing to be a mother, loving your offspring as much as human mothers do, and yet be speechless and helpless," she moaned.
"They tied me in here and drove Selim into a corner and caught him. I jerked and neighed until master kicked me and bade me shut my head. By this time the others had got Selim out, and I could hear him calling to me. His voice grew fainter and fainter and then all was still."
"I suppose your master sold him. Ross, the old horse at our place, says he was taken from his mother and sold."
"Oh me! if colts must be taken from their mothers in that way, why can't they get us used to the separation by degrees, not tear us apart without a moment's warning or word of farewell?"
"Why can't they?" I repeated, then added: "But I guess your master is getting pay now for his cruelty. His wife is almost dying with cholera, and my master says there are seven little children."
"I shall certainly pity the children if they are deprived of a mother's care, but they will feel no worse than little Selim does."
After awhile Dr. Dick came out to the shed. I suppose the rain had ceased by that time, at least the stream of water on my back had, but I was standing in some sort of filth, with the mud hardening on my legs. A long while he scraped and rubbed my legs and back, then turned me out into a little pasture.
"It will be better than this dirty place, Dandy," he said, and it was.
It was just growing gray in the morning when a man rode past the pasture on a horse that fairly swayed from side to side, he was so exhausted, and blood and foam poured from his mouth and nostrils.