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said the master, 'and keep out of
her way; you've done a bad day's work for this filly.' He growled
out something about a vicious brute. 'Hark ye,' said the father, 'a
bad-tempered man will never make a good-tempered horse. You've not
learned your trade yet, Samson.' Then he led me into my box, took
off the saddle and bridle with his own hands, and tied me up; then
he called for a pail of warm water and a sponge, took off his coat,
and while the stable-man held the pail, he sponged my sides a good
while, so tenderly that I was sure he knew how sore and bruised
they were. 'Whoa! my pretty one,' he said, 'stand still, stand
still.' His very voice did me good, and the bathing was very
comfortable. The skin was so broken at the corners of my mouth that
I could not eat the hay, the stalks hurt me. He looked closely at
it, shook his head, and told the man to fetch a good bran mash and
put some meal into it. How good that mash was! and so soft and
healing to my mouth. He stood by all the time I was eating,
stroking me and talking to the man. 'If a high-mettled creature
like this,' said he, 'can't be broken by fair means, she will never
be good for anything.'
    "After that he often came to see me, and when my mouth was
healed the other breaker, Job, they called him, went on training
me; he was steady and thoughtful, and I soon learned what he
wanted."

Chapter 8 Ginger's Story Continued
    The next time that Ginger and I were together in the paddock she
told me about her first place.
    "After my breaking in," she said, "I was bought by a dealer to
match another chestnut horse. For some weeks he drove us together,
and then we were sold to a fashionable gentleman, and were sent up
to London. I had been driven with a check-rein by the dealer, and I
hated it worse than anything else; but in this place we were reined
far tighter, the coachman and his master thinking we looked more
stylish so. We were often driven about in the park and other
fashionable places. You who never had a check-rein on don't know
what it is, but I can tell you it is dreadful.
    "I like to toss my head about and hold it as high as any horse;
but fancy now yourself, if you tossed your head up high and were
obliged to hold it there, and that for hours together, not able to
move it at all, except with a jerk still higher, your neck aching
till you did not know how to bear it. Besides that, to have two
bits instead of one—and mine was a sharp one, it hurt my tongue and
my jaw, and the blood from my tongue colored the froth that kept
flying from my lips as I chafed and fretted at the bits and rein.
It was worst when we had to stand by the hour waiting for our
mistress at some grand party or entertainment, and if I fretted or
stamped with impatience the whip was laid on. It was enough to
drive one mad."
    "Did not your master take any thought for you?" I said.
    "No," said she, "he only cared to have a stylish turnout, as
they call it; I think he knew very little about horses; he left
that to his coachman, who told him I had an irritable temper! that
I had not been well broken to the check-rein, but I should soon get
used to it; but he was not the man to do it, for when I was in the
stable, miserable and angry, instead of being smoothed and quieted
by kindness, I got only a surly word or a blow. If he had been
civil I would have tried to bear it. I was willing to work, and
ready to work hard too; but to be tormented for nothing but their
fancies angered me. What right had they to make me suffer like
that? Besides the soreness in my mouth, and the pain in my neck, it
always made my windpipe feel bad, and if I had stopped there long I
know it would have spoiled my breathing; but I grew more and more
restless and irritable, I could not help it; and I began to snap
and kick when any one came to harness me; for this the groom beat
me, and one day, as they had just buckled us into the carriage, and
were straining my head up with that rein, I began to plunge and
kick with all my