“Look at him,” complained Joey, “he pays no more attention to us than as if we weren’t here.”  Cuddy usually kicked during grooming, but his present indifference was more insulting.

“Huh!” said Willet. “he knows them sextons went to Break-Neck to dig the grave for him.  Don’t yer, Devil?  Say, Joey, look at him listening like he was counting the number of spadefuls it takes to make a horse’s grave.  He’s thinking, old Cuddy is, and scheming what he’d like to do.  I wouldn’t ride him from here to Break-Neck, not for a thousand dollars.”  He began rapidly with the body brush on Cuddy’s powerful haunch, then burst out: 

“He thinks he’ll be good and we’ll think he’s hit the sawdust trail, or perhaps he wants to look pretty in his coffin.  Huh!  Give me that curry.  You wash off his face a bit.”  Cuddy turned his aristocratic face away from the wet cloth and blew tremulously.  Joey tapped the blazing star on his forehead.

“Right there,” he explained to Willet, “but anyhow he’s begun to show his age.”  He pointed the muzzle which had the run forward look of an old horse and to the pits above the eyes.  The grooming was finished but neither Gething came to the stable from the big house nor the trench diggers from Break-Neck to say that their work was done.

“Say, Joey,” suggested Willet, “I’ll do up his mane in red and yellow worsteds, like he was going to be exhibited.  Red and yellow look well on a bay.  You get to the paddock and see Frenchman hasn’t slipped his blanket while I fetch the worsteds from the office.”

Cuddy left alone, stopped his listening and began pulling at his halter.  It held him firm.  From the brown dusk of their box-stalls two lines of expectant horses’ faces watched him.  The pretty chestnut, Happiness, already had been transferred to his old box, her white striped face was barely visible.  Farther down, on the same side, Goblin stood staring stupidly and beyond were the heads of the three brothers, Sans Pareil, Sans Peur and the famous Sans Souci who could clear seven feet of timber (and now was lame.) Opposite stood Bohemia, cold blood in her veins as a certain thickness about the throat testified, and little Martini, the flat racer.  On either side of him were Hotspur and Meteor and there were a dozen others as famous.  Above each stall was hung the brass plate giving the name and pedigree and above that up to the roof the hay was piled sweet and dusty-smelling.  The barn swallows twittered by an open window in the loft.  In front of Cuddy the great double doors were open to the fields and pastures, the gray hills and the radiant sky.  Cuddy reared abruptly striking out with his front legs, crouched and sprang against his halter again, but it held him fast.  Willet, on returning with his worsted, found him as he had left him, motionless as a bronze horse on a black marble clock.

Willet stood on a stool the better to work on the horse’s neck.  His practised fingers twisted and knotted the mane and worsted, then cut the ends into hard tassels.  The horse’s withers were reached and the tassels bobbing rakishly gave a hilarious look to the condemned animal.