Hot Potato Read Online Free PDF Page A

glance.
    'You would have made me get on her first
anyway,' Lindsey said. 'Why don't you have a ride
now? What's fifteen minutes?'
    Erin's face broke into a smile and she took the
reins. 'Give me a boost, will you? Is she fiery? Has she
shied or anything?'
    Lindsey cupped her hands together and Erin
stepped into them, flipping her other leg over the
pony's back.
    'OK, Bess, be a good girl now,' Lindsey murmured,
patting her neck.
    'Her name is Hotty!' Shelby said. She could feel
her chest tightening and her face going red. 'You can't
have every part of it all to yourself. It's not fair!'
    'Jeez, Shel, chill, peppermill,' said Erin, adjusting
the reins. 'Wow, she feels really narrow after Bandit.'
    Shelby glared at Erin. She shook her head, and
then squeezed Blue's sides, pushing him around
towards the gate.
    'I'll leave you to it then,' she said.
    'Shelby,' Lindsey called after her. 'What's the big
deal? I'm sorry, OK?'
    It's too late , Shelby thought. It wasn't as though
Lindsey could unride her. 'I have work to do,' she said
without looking back.

7 A Levy
    The afternoon sunlight slipped through the cracks
between the wall palings, leaving bands of light and
shade on the floor. One of the muscular feed-shed
rat-cats lay on a stack of hay bales licking its paws.
The striped shadows on its fur made it look like a
tiger.
    Shelby looked up at the blackboard, muttered,
'Two green chaff, one pellets, two stud mix,' and then
slid the dipper into the chaff bin.
    Some of the agisters at the stables kept their own
feed in their tack rooms, while others paid extra to
have their horses fed by the staff.
    The feed buckets for these clients had the horses'
names on them. It was simply a matter of filling it
with the ingredients listed on the board next to the
horse's name and then placing the bucket in the trolley
ready to take out to the stables.
    All around were the sounds of horses – snorting
into their bins, cantering in the arena, clip-clopping
down the laneway. Shelby could hear the puff-squeak
of electric brakes from a truck backing in. She could
hear the crackly thumping and scraping of someone
moving bags of feed around in their tack room. In the
arena Miss Anita's voice was calling out military-style,
'Left, right, left, right.' Somewhere in the next stable
block a group of girls laughed.
    Shelby was starting to feel silly for the way she had
behaved with her friends. Lindsey should have waited,
but Shelby doubted that she herself would have, if
she'd been the one to arrive first. Was it a big enough
deal to go off in a huff and miss out on a whole afternoon
of playing with the new pony?
    'No,' she muttered out loud, wishing she'd let it
go, like Erin had.
    Picking up the next bucket, Shelby glanced up at
the blackboard and thrust the dipper into the bin of
pony pellets.
    Lindsey was right too. She had paid for the horse,
and they probably would have decided that she should
ride first. Now Shelby would have to make up with
her, and there would be that little while afterwards
that was strained and awkward.
    Shelby sighed. 'I'm a duffer.'
    The best way to make amends would be to give
Lindsey the fifty dollars. Then they would be square.
It was just a matter of finding it.
    Shelby didn't get pocket money from her parents.
She had asked to have it weeks in advance so many
times that her parents had lost count and given up.
Now they had agreed on the things they would buy
for her – like money for the canteen at school, Blue's
food and worming paste, getting his feet trimmed, and
her pony club fees. For anything above that she had to
do extra chores around the house.
    What could she tell them she was buying? It
seemed as though her parents were paying attention to
what she said these days, so she would have to be
careful.
    With all the feeds made up, Shelby hefted a bale of
hay onto the front of the trolley and dragged it out
of the shed. She stopped at the first stable, tipped the
feed into the bin and dropped a biscuit of hay