“Look at this Dutchman—­see the size of him.  You’d think he hadn’t any more nerves than a bit of granite.  Yet he’s got a skin as sensitive as a girl’s.  See how he quivers if I run the curry-comb too harshly over him.  The idiot I got him from didn’t know what was the matter with him.  He’d bought him for a reliable horse, and there he was, kicking and stamping whenever the boy went near him.  ’Your boy’s got too heavy a hand, Deacon Jones,’ said I, when he described the horse’s actions to me.  ’You may depend upon it, a four-legged creature, unlike a two-legged one, has a reason for everything he does.’  ‘But he’s only a draught horse,’ said Deacon Jones.  ‘Draught horse or no draught horse,’ said I, ’you’re describing a horse with a tender skin to me, and I don’t care if he’s as big as an elephant.’  Well, the old man grumbled and said he didn’t want any thoroughbred airs in his stable, so I bought you, didn’t I, Dutchman?” and Mr. Wood stroked him kindly and went to the next stall.

In each stall was a small tank of water with a sliding cover, and I found out afterward that these covers were put on when a horse came in too heated to have a drink.  At any other time, he could drink all he liked.  Mr. Wood believed in having plenty of pure water for all his animals and they all had their own place to get a drink.

Even I had a little bowl of water in the woodshed, though I could easily have run up to the barnyard when I wanted a drink.  As soon as I came, Mrs. Wood asked Adele to keep it there for me and when I looked up gratefully at her, she said:  “Every animal should have its own feeding place and its own sleeping place, Joe; that is only fair.”

The next horses Mr. Wood groomed were the black ones, Cleve and Pacer.  Pacer had something wrong with his mouth, and Mr. Wood turned back his lips and examined it carefully.  This he was able to do, for there were large windows in the stable and it was as light as Mr. Wood’s house was.

“No dark corners here, eh Joe!” said Mr. Wood, as he came out of the stall and passed me to get a bottle from a shelf.  “When this stable was built, I said no dirt holes for careless men here.  I want the sun to shine in the corners, and I don’t want my horses to smell bad smells, for they hate them, and I don’t want them starting when they go into the light of day, just because they’ve been kept in a black hole of a stable, and I’ve never had a sick horse yet.”

He poured something from a bottle into a saucer and went back to Pacer with it.  I followed him and stood outside.  Mr. Wood seemed to be washing a sore in the horse’s mouth.  Pacer winced a little, and Mr. Wood said:  “Steady, steady, my beauty; ’twill soon be over.”

The horse fixed his intelligent eyes on his master and looked as if he knew that he was trying to do him good.