“Just wait till I bait Blackie, mother,” said her son, “I’ll be with you in a minute, but I want to attend to my beauty first. Ah! she’s a grand little lady, mother!”
“Just the same as you always were, Hal, somebody first and yourself afterwards. What a famous little mount she is though! Wherever did you pick her up?”
“She is a thorough little Arab. I broke her in myself, and it’s one of my best investments, father.”
Here Blackie thought fit to express her thanks to her master for his kind remarks about her, and Farmer Fairfax stepped aside to allow her to show off her capers.
“There’s a second stall in the stable, Harry,” said his father. “Bring her along; my boy; Simon will be very pleased to have a bright little friend like Blackie.”
[Illustration: _“I hope you feel at home now, Pat,” said the little Terrier._]
At first he was shy, fearfully shy, for he was not used to being stared at, and Blackie had such beautiful eyes which opened in wonder at the ungainly specimen before her.
“Good-day, sir,” she began, “I suppose I am to share this place with you!”
“What a rusty old creature he is,” Blackie was thinking. “I believe he’s blushing.”
“Where did she come from?” thought Simon. Presently he stammered:
But before the answer was given Tony and Pat came tumbling in, breathless with running.
“I hope you feel at home now, Pat?” said the little terrier.
“And you like your quarters? I say, Pat, you’re the best fellow I ever saw in my life. Such a racer—such a catcher—” and for answer, Pat, who was tired out, had laid down to rest, snored “stunnin’.”
It was the end of the season at Burney, and already many of the ponies had left the sands to earn a winter living with the farmers round about. “Or do odd jobs,” Jenkins said, anything, in fact, till summer came round again, and they might go back to Burney and help to earn money by riding children up and down the sands at so much an hour or less.
“I wonder if I shall go to my coughy old gentleman this winter,” began Snowie. “I’ve been with him two winters already, and although he is awfully wheezy, and limpy, he’s easier to manage than wriggly children. Still I am sorry the summer is over. What say you, Bob?”
[Illustration: _Riding Children up and down on the Sands._]