TINKLE MEETS DIDO
Every morning, as soon as he had eaten his breakfast, George would run
out to the stable to see Tinkle. He would rub the soft, velvety nose
of his pet pony, or bring him a piece of bread or a lump of sugar.
Sometimes Mabel, too, would come out with her brother to look at Tinkle
before she went to school.
“And when we come back from school we’ll have a ride on your back,”
said George, waving his hand to Tinkle.
A few days after he had been brought to his new home Tinkle had been
taken to a blacksmith’s shop and small iron shoes had been fastened to
the pony’s hoofs.
At first Tinkle was afraid he was going to be hurt, but he thought of
what Dapple Gray and the other horses had told him and made up his
mind――if ponies have minds――that he would stand a little pain if he had
to. But he did not. The blacksmith was kind and gentle, and though it
felt a bit funny at first, when he lifted up one of Tinkle’s legs, the
pony soon grew used to it.
It felt queer, too, when the iron shoes were nailed on. And when Tinkle
stood on his four newly shod feet he hardly knew whether he could step
out properly or not. But he soon found that it was all right.
“I’m taller with my new shoes on than in my bare hoofs,” said Tinkle
to himself, and he was taller――about an inch I guess. The clatter and
clang of his iron shoes on the paving stones sounded like music to
Tinkle, and he soon found that it was better for him to have iron shoes
on than to run over the stones in his hoofs, which would soon have worn
down so that his feet would have hurt.
“Now Tinkle is ready to give us a ride in the little cart!” cried
George when his pony had come home from the blacksmith shop.
“Take Patrick with you so as to make sure you know how to drive, and
how to handle Tinkle,” said Mrs. Farley, as George and Mabel made ready
for their first real drive――outside the yard this time.
George and Mabel got into the pony cart, George taking the reins, while
Mabel sat beside him. Patrick, the coachman, sat in the back of the
cart, ready to help if he were needed.
“Gid-dap!” called George, and he headed the pony down the driveway.
“Gid-dap, Tinkle,” and Tinkle trotted along.
“Don’t they look cute!” exclaimed Mrs. Farley to her husband as they
watched the children from the dining room window. “I hope nothing
happens to them.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right,” said her husband. “Tinkle is a kind and
gentle pony. Besides there is Patrick. He’ll know just what to do if
anything should happen.”
“Well, I hope nothing does,” said Mrs. Farley. “There! they’ve stopped!
I wonder what for.”
The pony cart had stopped at the driveway gates, and Patrick, with a
queer smile on his face, came walking back.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Farley. “Did anything happen――and so soon?”
“No’m,” replied the coachman, “but Master George wants to know if you’d
like to have him bring anything from the store. He says he’d like to
buy something for you.”
“Oh!” and Mrs. Farley laughed. “Well, I don’t know that I need any
groceries. But I suppose he wants to do an errand in the new cart. So
tell him he may get a pound of loaf sugar. He and Mabel can feed the
lumps to Tinkle.”
“Very well, ma’am, I’ll tell him,” and, touching his hat, Patrick went
back to George and Mabel.
“Well, I guess everything is all right,” thought Tinkle to himself as
he trotted along in front of the pony cart, hauling George, Mabel and
Patrick. “It’s a good deal easier than I thought, and my new iron shoes
feel fine!”
So he trotted along merrily, and George and his sister, sitting in the
pony cart, enjoyed their ride very much. George drove Tinkle along the
streets, turning him now to the left, by pulling on the left rein, and
again to the other side by jerking gently on the right rein.
“Am I doing all right, Patrick?” asked the little boy.
“Fine, Master George,” answered the coachman. “You drive as well as
anybody.”
“I’ll let you take a turn soon, Mabel,” said George.
“Oh, I don’t want to――just yet,” replied the little girl. “I want to
watch and see how you do it. Besides, I’d be afraid to drive where
there are so many horses and wagons,” for they were on the main street
of the city.
“You’ll soon get so you can do as well as Master George,” declared
Patrick. “Tinkle is an easy pony to manage.”
As George and Mabel traveled on in their pony cart, they met several of
their playmates who waved their hands to the Farley children.
[Illustration: “Oh, what a nice pony cart!” cried the boys and girls.]
“Oh, what a nice pony cart!” cried the boys and girls.
“I’ll give you a ride, some day,” promised George.
He and Mabel were soon at the store, and, going in, they bought the
loaf sugar. Patrick stayed out in the pony cart, and Tinkle stood still
next to the curb. Near him was a horse hitched to a wagon full of coal.
“Hello, my little pony!” called the coal-horse. “You have a fine rig
there.”
“Yes, it is pretty nice,” said Tinkle, and he was sure he must look
very gorgeous, for Mabel had tied a blue ribbon in his mane that
morning.
“You’re quite stylish,” went on the coal-horse.
“Well, I s’pose you _might_ call it that,” admitted Tinkle.
“It’s much more fun to be pulling a light, little cart like that around
the city streets, than to haul a great big heavy coal wagon, such as I
am hitched to,” went on the big horse.
“Yes, but see how strong you are!” observed Tinkle. “I never could pull
such a heavy load as you haul.”
“No, I guess you couldn’t,” said the coal horse. “Especially up some of
the hills we have. It is almost more than I can do, and there is one
hill that I have to take a rest on, half way up, but my driver is good
to me, and never whips me, which is more than I can say of some drivers
I have known. So I guess, after all, it is better for you to draw the
pony cart and for me to stick to the coal wagon.”
“Indeed it is,” said a horse that was hitched to one of the grocery
wagons. “You’d look funny, coal-horse, trying to fit between the shafts
of that pony cart.”
“I suppose I would,” admitted the other, laughing, in a way horses have
among themselves.
When George and Mabel came out of the store, with the bag of sugar
lumps, they saw the two horses――one hitched to a coal wagon and the
other to a grocery cart――rubbing noses with Tinkle.
“They’re kissing each other,” laughed the little girl.
But the horses and the pony were really talking among themselves,
and even Patrick, much as he knew about animals, did not understand
horse-talk.
“Let’s give Tinkle some sugar now,” said Mabel.
“All right,” answered George, so they gave the pony two lumps.
“My, that sugar certainly smells good!” exclaimed the horse that was
hitched to the coal wagon.
“It certainly does,” said the other horse, sniffing hard through his
nose, for the air was filled with the sweet smell of the sugar lumps
Tinkle was eating. “You might think,” went on the grocery horse, “that,
working for a store, as I do, I’d get a lump of sugar once in a while.”
“Don’t you?” asked Tinkle, reaching out for another sweet lump George
offered him.
“Never a bit!” said the grocery-horse, “and I just love it!”
“So do I,” said the coal-horse.
“I’m sorry I didn’t offer you some,” apologized Tinkle. “But it’s too
late now. I’ve swallowed it.”
Just then Mabel thought of something nice.
“Oh, George!” she cried. “Let’s give the two horses some of Tinkle’s
sugar. I guess horses like sweet stuff the same as ponies. Don’t they,
Patrick?” she asked the coachman.
“Sure they do, Miss Mabel,” he answered. “Sure they do!”
“Then give them some, George,” she begged. “We have more than enough
for Tinkle.”
“All right,” said the little boy. So he held out two lumps of sugar
to the coal horse, and two to the grocery horse, and I just wish you
could have seen how glad those horses were to get the sweet stuff. If
they could have talked man language they would have thanked George and
Mabel, but as it was they could only say to one another and to Tinkle:
“Well, you certainly have a good home with such nice children in it.”
“I’m glad you think so,” whinnied Tinkle to them, and he felt very
happy.
George and Mabel drove home in their pony cart, carrying what was left
of the bag of sugar. When they were near their home, and on a quiet
street, George let his sister take the reins so she would learn how to
handle them. Patrick watched the little girl carefully and told her how
and when to pull, so Tinkle would go to the right or to the left, and
also around the corners.
“Oh, Mother! now I know how to drive!” cried Mabel as she ran into
the house to tell her father and Mrs. Farley about their first trip
downtown in the new pony cart.
After that George and Mabel had many rides behind Tinkle, even in the
Winter, when they hitched him to a little sled. The little pony grew to
like his little boy and girl friends very much indeed, and they loved
him dearly. They would hug him and pat him whenever they went out to
the stable where he was, and feed him lumps of sugar. When Spring came
they took long rides in the country.
One day a funny thing happened to Tinkle. He had been hitched to the
pony cart which was tied to a post in front of the house, waiting
for George and Mabel to come out. And then, from somewhere down the
street sounded the tooting of a horn, and a queer odor, which made him
tremble, came to the pony’s nostrils.
“I wonder what that is?” said Tinkle to himself. Very soon he found out.
Along came a man wearing a red cap, and every once in a while he would
put a brass horn to his mouth and blow a tooting tune. But this was not
what surprised Tinkle most. What did, was a big shaggy animal, that the
man was leading by a chain. And when Tinkle saw the shaggy creature he
was afraid. But the other animal, rising up on its hind legs said:
“Don’t be afraid of me, little pony. I won’t hurt you!”
“Who are you?” asked Tinkle, wonderingly.
“I am Dido, the dancing bear,” was the answer, “and I have had many
adventures that have been put into a book.”