THE PONY THAT KEPT THE STORE.
It was a shabby old store, built where two cross-roads and a lane met atthe foot of a low hill, and left between them a small triangular spacefringed with grass. On the hill stood a summer hotel, full of boardersfrom the neighboring city; for the place was cool and airy, and a wideexpanse of sea and rocky islands, edged with beaches and wooded points,stretched away from the hill's foot.
In years gone by, the shabby old store had driven quite a flourishingtrade during the months of the year when the hotel was open. Theboarders went there for their ink and tacks; their sewing-silk andshoe-buttons; for the orange marmalade and potted ham which theycarried on picnics; for the liquid blacking, which saved the boot-boy atthe hotel so much labor; the letter-paper, on which they wrote to theirfriends what a good time they were having; and all the thousand and onethings of which people who have little to do with their time and moneyfancy themselves in want. But a year before the time at which the eventsI am about to relate took place, the owner of the store built himself anew and better one at a place a mile further on, where there was a stilllarger hotel and a group of cottages, and removed thither with hisbelongings. The old building had stood empty for some months, and atlast was hired for a queer use,--namely, to serve as stable for a verysmall Shetland pony, not much larger than a calf, or an extra largeNewfoundland dog.
"Cloud" was the pony's name. He belonged to Ned Cabot, who was nineyears old, and was not only his pony, but his intimate friend as well.Ned loved him only the better for a terrible accident which had befallenCloud a few months before.
The Cabots, who had been living on Lake Superior for a while, came backto the East with all their goods and chattels, and among the rest, theirhorses. It had been a question as to how little Cloud should travel; andat last a box was built which could be set in a freight-car, and inwhich, it was hoped, he would make the journey in safety. But accidentssometimes happen even when the utmost care is taken, and, sad to relate,Cloud arrived in Boston with his tiny foreleg broken.
Horses' legs are hard to mend, you know; and generally when one breaks,it is thought the easiest and cheapest way out of the trouble to shootthe poor animal at once, and buy another to take his place. But the baremention of such a thing threw Ned into such paroxysms of grief, and hesobbed so dreadfully, that all his family made haste to assure him thatunder no circumstances should Cloud be shot. Instead, he was sent to ahospital,--not the Massachusetts General, I think, but something almostas superior in its line, where animals are treated, and there thesurgeons slung him up, and put his leg into plaster, exactly as if hehad been a human being. Had he been a large, heavy horse, I suppose theycould hardly have done this; but being a little light pony, it waspossible. And the result was that the poor fellow got well, and was notlamed in the least, which made his little master very happy. He lovedCloud all the more for this great escape, and Cloud fully returned Ned'saffection. He was a rather over-indulged and overfed pony; but with Ned,he was always a pattern of gentleness and propriety. Ned could lie flaton his back and read story books by the hour without the least fear thatCloud would jump or shy or shake him off. Far from it! Cloud wouldgraze quietly up and down, taking pains not to disturb the reading, onlyturning his head now and then to see if Ned was comfortable, and when hefound him so, giving a little satisfied whinny, which seemed to say,"Here we are, and what a time we are having!" Surely, no pony could beexpected to do better than that.
So now little Cloud, with his foreleg quite mended and as strong asever, was the sole occupant of the roomy old country store. A littlestall had been partitioned off for him in a corner where there was awindow, out of which he could see the buckboards and cut-unders driveby, and the daisies and long grass on the opposite slope blowing in thefresh sea wind. Horses have curiosity, and like to look out of thewindow and watch what is going on as well as people do.
There were things inside the store that were worth looking at as well asthings outside. When Mr. Harrison, the storekeeper, moved away, hecarried off most of his belongings, but a few articles he left behind, Isuppose because he did not consider them worth taking away. There weretwo blue painted counters and some rough hanging shelves, a set of rustyold scales and weights, a row of glass jars with a little dab ofsomething at the bottom of each,--rice, brown sugar, cream-of-tartar,cracker crumbs, and fragments of ginger-snaps. There was also a bottlehalf full of fermented olives, a paper parcel of musty corn flour, and,greatest of all, a big triangle of cheese, blue with mould, in a roundred wooden box with wire sides, like an enormous mouse-trap. It wasquite a stock-in-trade for a pony, and Cloud had so much the air ofbeing in possession, that the smallest of the children at the hotelalways spoke of the place as his store. "I want to go down to Cloud'sstore," they would say to their nurses.
Ned and his sister Constance took a great deal of the care of the ponyon themselves. A freckled little country lad named Dick had been engagedto feed and clean him; but he so often ran away from his work that thechildren were never easy in their minds for fear lest Cloud had beenforgotten and was left supperless or with no bed to lie upon. Almostalways, and especially on Sunday nights, when he of the freckles wasmost apt to absent himself, they would coax their mother to let them rundown the last thing and make sure that all was right. If it were not,Ned would turn to, and Constance also, to feed and bed the pony; theywere both strong and sturdy, and could do the work very well, onlyConstance always wanted to braid his mane to make it kink, and Ned wouldnever let her; so they sometimes ended with quarrelling.
One day in August it happened that Ned's father and mother, his bigbrother, his two sisters, and, in fact, most of the grown people in thehotel, went off on a picnic to White Gull Island, which was about sevenmiles out to sea. They started at ten in the morning, with a goodbreeze, and a load of very attractive-looking lunch-baskets; but at noonthe wind died down, and did not spring up again, and when Ned's bedtimecame, they had still not returned. Their big sail could be seen far outbeyond the islands. They were rowing the boat, Mr. Gale, thehotel-keeper, said; but unless the wind came up, he did not think theywould be in much before midnight.
Ned had not gone with the others. He had hurt his foot a day or twobefore, and his mother thought climbing rocks would be bad for it. Hehad cried a little when Constance and the rest sailed away, but had soonbeen consoled. Mrs. Cabot had arranged a series of treats for him, a rowwith Nurse, a sea-bath, a new story-book, and had asked a little boy heliked to come over from the other hotel and spend the afternoon on thebeach. There had been the surprise of a box of candy and two bigpeaches. Altogether, the day had gone happily, and it was not till Nursehad put Ned to bed and gone off to a "praise meeting" in the Methodistchapel, that it occurred to him to feel lonely.
He lay looking out at sea, which was lit by the biggest and whitest moonever seen. Far away he could catch the shimmer of the idle sail, whichseemed scarcely nearer than it had done at supper-time.
"I wish Mamma were here to kiss me for good-night," reflected Ned,rather dismally. "I don't feel sleepy a bit, and it isn't nice to havethem all gone."
From the foot of the hill came a sound of small hoofs stampingimpatiently. Then a complaining whinny was heard. Ned sat up in bed.Something was wrong with Cloud, he was sure.
"It's that bad Dick. He's gone off and forgotten to give Cloud anysupper," thought Ned. Then he called "Mary! Ma-ry!" several times,before he remembered that Mary was gone to the praise meeting.
"I don't care!" he said aloud. "I'm not going to let my Cloudy starvefor anybody."
So he scrambled out of bed, found his shoes, and hastily put on some ofthe clothes which Mary had just taken off and folded up. There was noone on the piazza to note the little figure as it sped down the slope.Everybody was off enjoying the moonlight in some way or other.
It was, indeed, as Ned had suspected. Dick of the freckles had gonefishing and forgotten Cloud altogether. The moon shone full through theeastern windows of the store, making it almost as light as day,
and Nedhad no trouble in finding the hay and the water-pail. He watched thepony as he hungrily champed and chewed the sweet-smelling heap andsucked up the water, then he brushed out his stall, and scatteredstraw, and then sat down "for a minute," as he told himself, to rest andwatch Cloud go to sleep. It was very pleasant in the old store, hethought.
Presently Cloud lay down on the straw too, and cuddled close up to Ned,who patted and stroked him. Ned thought he was asleep, he lay so still.But after a little while Cloud stirred and got up, first on his forelegsand then altogether. He stood a moment watching Ned, who pretended to besleeping, then he opened the slatted door of his stall, moved gentlyacross the floor and went in behind the old blue counter.
"What _is_ he going to do?" thought Ned. "I never saw anything so funny.Constance will never believe when I tell her about it."
What Cloud did was to take one of the glass jars from the shelf in histeeth, and set it on the counter. It was the one which held thegingersnap crumbs. Cloud lifted off the lid. Just then a clatter ofhoofs was heard outside, and another horse came in. Ned knew the horsein a minute. It was the yellow one which Mr. Gale drove in hisbuckboard.
The yellow horse trotted up to the counter, and he and Cloud talkedtogether for a few minutes. It was in pony language, and Ned could notunderstand what they said; but it had to do with the gingersnaps,apparently, for Cloud poured part of them out on the counter, and thebuckboard horse greedily licked them up. Then he gave Cloud something byway of payment. Ned could not see what, but it seemed to be a nail outof his hind shoe, and then tiptoed out of the store and across the roadto the field where the horses grazed, while Cloud opened a drawer at theback of the counter and threw in the nail, if it was one. It _sounded_like a nail.
He had scarcely done so when more hoofs sounded, and two other horsescame in. Horse one was the bay which went with the yellow in thebuckboard, the other Mr. Gale's sorrel colt, which he allowed no one todrive except himself. Cloud seemed very glad to see them. And such alively chorus went on across the counter of whinnies and snorts andsplutters, accompanied with such emphatic stamps, that Ned shrank into adark corner, and did not dare to laugh aloud, though he longed to as hepeeped between the bars.
The sorrel colt seemed to want a great many things. He evidently had theshopping instinct. Cloud lifted down all the jars, one by one, and thecolt sampled their contents. The cream-of-tartar he did not like at all;but he ate all the brown sugar and the cracker crumbs, tasted an oliveand let it drop with a disgusted neigh, and lastly took a bite of themouldy cheese in the red trap, and expressed his opinion of it by whatseemed to be a "swear-word." Then he and the bay-horse and Cloud wentto the end of the store where a rusty old stove without any pipe stood,sat down on their haunches before it, put their forelegs on its top, andbegan, as it seemed, to discuss politics; at least, it soundedwonderfully like the conversation that had gone on in that very cornerin Mr. Harrison's day, when the farmers collected to predict the defeatof the candidate on the other side, whoever he might be.
They talked so long that Ned grew very sleepy, and lay down again on thestraw. He felt that he ought to go home and to bed, but he did not quitedare. The strange horses might take offence at his being there, hethought; still, he had a comfortable feeling that as Cloud's friend theywould not do him any real harm. Even when, as it seemed, one of themcame into the stall, took hold of his shoulder, and began to shake himviolently, he was not really frightened.
"Don't!" he said sleepily. "I won't tell anybody. Cloud knows me. I'm afriend of his."
"Ned! wake up! Ned! wake up!" said some one. Was it the red horse?
No, it was his father. And there was Mamma on the other side of him. Andthere was Cloud lying on the straw close by, pretending to be asleep,but with one eye half open!
"Wake up!" said Papa; "here it is, after eleven o'clock, and Mamma halffrightened to death at getting home and not finding you in your bed. Howdid you come down here, sir?"
"Cloud was crying for his supper, and I came down to feed him,"explained Ned. "And then I stayed to watch him keep store. Oh, it was sofunny, Mamma! The other horses came and bought things, and Cloud wasjust like a real storekeeper, and sold crackers to them, and sugar, andtook the money--no, it was nails, I think."
"My dear, you have been dreaming," said Mrs. Cabot. "Don't let him talkany more, John. He is all excited now, and won't sleep if you do."
So, though Ned loudly protested that he had not been asleep at all, andso could not have dreamed, he was put to bed at once, and no one wouldlisten to him. And next day it was just as bad, for all of them,Constance as well as the rest, insisted that Ned had fallen asleep inthe pony's stall and dreamed the whole thing. Even when he opened thedrawer at the back of the counter and showed them the shoe-nail thatCloud had dropped in, they would not believe. There was nothingremarkable in there being a nail there, they said; all sorts of thingswere put in the drawers of country stores.
But Ned and Cloud knew very well that it was not a dream.