Free Stable Manners by Bonnie Bryant Page B

have to be meaner, sneakier, and tougher—all because of you.”
    “You’re very good at it,” Stevie said. Then she realized that that might not sound like much of a compliment. She tried to soften it. “I mean, it takes one to know one,” she told him.
    He smiled weakly. Then he stood up. “Back to the drawing board,” he said. “Now get out of here. I’ve got a lot of work to do. And so do you.”
    The girls shared a feeling that was hard to describe when they left Max’s office. They felt awful because they knew they’d let Max down—and Colonel Hanson, too. They felt worried because they knew there were just a few days until the Know-Down and there was a lot to learn from the study sheets that they hadn’t learned from the question-and-answer pages and they all wanted to do very well. And there was another feeling, too. They all felt relieved because they knew that, hard as it was, and as much trouble as they were causing, they felt better being honest about what had happened.
    Carole and her father walked behind Lisa and Stevie. Nobody was talking. There was too muchthinking going on. It took Carole only a minute to pick up her backpack from the locker area and she met her father in the car. She pulled the door closed and prepared for a long drive home.
    Colonel Hanson started up the engine and the journey began.
    “I’m sorry, Dad,” Carole said. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just didn’t think—”
    “I know you didn’t think.” The irritation was clear in his voice.
    “I really
am
sorry,” she repeated.
    “I know you are, honey,” he said more softly. “I know you didn’t mean to do it. I always knew you didn’t mean to. Almost, anyway. At first, I wasn’t sure.”
    Always?
    “You knew?”
    “Sure, I did,” he said. “From the moment I saw that the papers had been moved on my desk.”
    “And you didn’t say anything?”
    “What was I going to say? It was up to you to say something, not me. I knew you would, too.”
    “You did?”
    “Of course I did. You’re my daughter. You know right from wrong. Sometimes it might take you awhile to figure out which is which, but I knew you’d come through.”
    Carole was simply stunned. Then another thought occurred to her.
    “Did you think we were cheating?” she asked.
    “I knew what you were up to,” he said. “You broke the rules the moment you decided to take papers off my desk. The fact that you didn’t know how much you were cheating is just a question of degree. What I was always sure of was that you’d come clean—only I didn’t know when.”
    Carole didn’t know what to say. Her father seemed to have an infinite capacity to surprise her. It made her love him all the more.
    “Thanks, Dad,” she said.
    “For what?”
    “For trusting me when I didn’t deserve it.”
    He took her hand and squeezed it. “That’s what dads are for,” he said.
    They rode the rest of the way home without talking. Carole mulled over all the events of the day. She’d learned a lot. Mostly, like Lisa, she’d learned that learning itself could involve a lot more than just studying hard. Some lessons were tougher than others. Today had been full of those.

“W HAT ARE THE five major internal parasites?” Carole asked Stevie. The three girls were sitting on bales of hay in the feed room, trying, once again, to make up for lost time.
    Stevie grimaced. “Why do you always ask me that question? It’s so disgusting to even think about those things.”
    “It’s even more disgusting if you’re a horse infested with them,” Carole said. “Then you’d really want your owner to know.”
    “All right. Here goes: botflies, bloodworms, pinworms, intestinal worms, and stomach worms. Butdon’t ask me how you know when your horse has them. It’s more than I can handle.”
    “I won’t,” Carole promised. “That’s what I’m going to ask Lisa.”
    Lisa was ready. “For botflies, you can spot the eggs on the horse’s coat. For the other