In less than a month her colt was born. "To think I can never see him," she said piteously. "Tell me, Dandy, how he looks!"
The complete loss of sight proved a terrible cross to her. Unlike many horses, she never learned to move with confidence. She was nervous and timid; indeed, I think she had been beaten about the head until her hearing was defective, and then the cruelties that had filled her life had wrought upon her sensitive nature until she was nervous and distrustful. Many a day, and sometimes days at a time, she has gone without water because she could not find the tank. As I am here going to dismiss poor Topsy from my story, I will say that her master soon sold her and her colt. A few times since, I have seen her toiling along beside her mate, her sightless face wearing a blank, worried expression, and always that timid, frightened way with her. Once we had a little talk, and she told me that her life was a misery. She cannot learn to trust herself, and as she is only "Old Tops," no one takes any pains with her. She said her shoulders were all galled under her collar.
Despite the bad fortune of her life, though, she has still a slender, graceful form and a high-bred air.
Poor Topsy! Victim of man's power!
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
At the end of that year Chet and his family went away, and not long after Master found the coveted place for Carm.
It went against him to put the boy on the railroad, and a brakeman's life is none too desirable at best; but nothing else would do, and he had made a fair record at school.
Master was going to spend the winter in New York and I was to be left at home. Tommy went to school in town, and himself and a hired man they called Burr, did the work at the farm.