He would pat and stroke her and say, 'Well, old Pet, and how is your little Darkie?' I was a dull black, so he called me Darkie then he would give me a piece of bread, which was very good, and sometimes he brought a carrot for my mother. When she saw him at the gate she would neigh with joy, and trot up to him. We were all fond of him, and my mother loved him very much. He gave us good food, good lodging, and kind words he spoke as kindly to us as he did to his little children. Her name was Duchess, but he often called her Pet. I have never forgotten my mother's advice I knew she was a wise old horse, and our master thought a great deal of her. I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.' You have been well-bred and well-born your father has a great name in these parts, and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races your grandmother had the sweetest temper of any horse I ever knew, and I think you have never seen me kick or bite. The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-horse colts, and of course they have not learned manners. 'I wish you to pay attention to what I am going to say to you.

One day, when there was a good deal of kicking, my mother whinnied to me to come to her, and then she said: Sometimes we had rather rough play, for they would frequently bite and kick as well as gallop. I used to run with them, and had great fun we used to gallop all together round and round the field as hard as we could go.

There were six young colts in the meadow besides me they were older than I was some were nearly as large as grown-up horses. When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.Īs soon as I was old enough to eat grass my mother used to go out to work in the daytime, and come back in the evening. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. While I was young I lived upon my mother's milk, as I could not eat grass. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master's house, which stood by the roadside at the top of the meadow was a grove of fir trees, and at the bottom a running brook overhung by a steep bank. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.

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