Free Six Ponies by Josephine Pullein-Thompson Page A

go?”
    “I couldn’t help it,” said Jill tearfully. “Anyway, you let go of the bay first, and now Wendy will be run over.” And she began to sniff.
    “For goodness’ sake shut up,” said Richard. “Did you see which way Peter went?”
    “No, I didn’t,” said Jill, “and I don’t care either. I know Wendy will be killed or else she’ll slip and break her leg, and then she’ll have to be put to sleep, and it’sall your fault for having one of Major Holbrooke’s beastly ponies.”
    Richard’s reply was drowned by furious shouts from the owner of the vegetable stall, who had returned to find a large brown pony eating apples and carrots as fast as he could. Richard guessed it must be Peter who was causing the shouts, so he ran towards them, and found a fat man with a red face waving a walking-stick at Peter and shouting loudly, though in such a very broad Barsetshire accent that Richard could not understand one word of what he was saying—which was perhaps just as well!
     

     
    Richard ran up to Peter and made a grab at his rein, but Peter, who had found out long before that he could frighten Richard if he wanted to, laid back his ears, bared his teeth and pretended he was going to bite. Richard jumped backwards and, thus encouraged, Peter walked after him.Richard began to run, and, to the joy of the crowd, Peter broke into a trot and chased him quite a way down the street before turning back to have another feed at the vegetable stall. Meanwhile Mr. Charr, the owner of the stall, thinking Peter had gone for good, began to tidy up the vegetables, but he hadn’t done much when Peter came trotting back and, rudely pushing Mr. Charr aside, buried his nose in a box of the best Cox’s Orange Pippins. They were the ones which were kept for show; the maggotty ones which Mr. Charr sold his customers were kept discreetly out of sight. Giving a yell of rage, Mr. Charr started to belabour Peter with his walking-stick, but Peter just turned on him and, being a coward, he too fled down the street, amid the derisive shouts of the even larger crowd which had collected.
    It so happened that, as they ate their lunch, Mrs. Cresswell and June had decided to go into Brampton that very afternoon to buy a head-collar and lunge-rein for Grey Dawn, as they had named the grey mare. Mrs. Cresswell told June that she must begin the pony’s training as quickly as possible, for, she said, the other children were such jealous little things that they were sure to make a dead set at June and do all in their power to beat her.
    As they drove into Brampton they remarked on the noise, which was unusually loud even for market day.
    “I do hope,” said Mrs. Cresswell anxiously, “that there isn’t a fire or anything else that might spread and upset Wonder.”
    “Don’t be so silly, Mummy,” said June. “There’d be a glow in the sky.”
    “Quite right, dear. I never thought of that,” said Mrs. Cresswell as she brought the car to a standstill in front of the saddler’s. It was a very small shop, with a low timbered roof and, sandwiched as it was between the post office—the only modern building in the town—and the King’s Head Hotel, which was tall, narrow, and of the late Georgian period, it looked absurd. But in spite of its unimposingappearance, Mr. Woodstock’s shop was well known in Barsetshire for its excellent saddlery.
    To the Cresswells’ annoyance, Mr. Woodstock wasn’t in his shop. They waited impatiently for a few minutes, June ringing the bell and grumbling, and then, as the laughter and shouting from the market-place attracted their curiosity, they walked round, past the Norman church—for which Brampton was famous—and into the High Street. There they saw Peter chasing Mr. Charr, whose face was redder than ever, up the street for the second time, while Richard stood, in an agony of embarrassment and indecision, with his hands in his pockets, and the crowd shrieked, guffawed, cried or whooped with joy