Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

cold.
    ‘I’ll see you after the show,’ he said. The tone of his voice made it sound as if it might be a threat or a promise.
    Dandy’s eyes gleamed. ‘You might,’ she said, as natural a coquette as ever flirted with a handsome youth. ‘I have other things to do than hang around a wagon.’
    ‘Oh?’ he asked. ‘What things?’
    ‘Meridon and I are going to the fair,’ she said. ‘And we’ve money to spend, and all.’
    For the first time he looked at me. ‘So you’re Meridon,’ he said carelessly. ‘My da says you can train little ponies. Could you manage a horse like this?’
    He gestured behind the screen and I peered around it. Tied to a stake on the ground was a beautiful grey stallion, standing quiet and docile, but his dark eye rolled towards me as he saw me.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ I said with longing. ‘I could look after him all right.’
    Jack gave me a little smile as warm and understanding as his da.
    ‘Would you like to ride him after the show?’ he invited. ‘Or do you have better things to do, like your sister?’
    Dandy’s fingers nipped my arm but for once I ignored her. ‘I’d love to ride him,’ I said hastily. ‘I’d rather ride him than go to any fair, any day.’
    He nodded at that. ‘Da said you were horse-mad,’ he said. ‘Wait till after the show and you can go up on him.’
    He glanced towards the gate and nodded as his father waved.
    ‘Take your seats,’ Robert Gower called in his loud announcing voice. ‘Take your seats for the greatest show in England and Europe!’
    Jack winked at Dandy and ducked behind the screen as his father shut the gate and came to the centre of the flat grass. Dandy and I scurried to the hill and sat down in expectant silence.
    I sat through the show in a daze. I had never seen horses with such training. They had four small ponies – Welsh mountain or New Forest, I thought – who started the show with a dancing act. There was a barrel organ playing and the boy Jack Gower stood in the middle of the ring with a fine purple coat over his red shirt and a long whip. As he cracked it and moved from the centre to the side the little ponies wheeled and trotted individually, turning on their hind legs, reversing the order, all with their heads up and the plumes on their heads jogging and their bells ringing ringing ringing like out-of-season sleighbells.
    People cheered as he finished with a flourish with all four ponies bending down in a horse curtsey, and he swept off his purple tricorne hat and bowed to the crowd. But he exchanged a look with Dandy as if to say that it was all for her, and I felt her swell with pride.
    The stallion was next in the ring, with a mane like white sea foam tumbling down over his arched neck. Robert Gower came in with him and made him rear and stamp his hooves to order. He picked out flags of any colour – you could call out a colour and he would bring you the one you ordered. He danced on the spot and he could count up numbers up to ten by pawing theground. He could add up, too, quicker than I could. He was a brilliant horse and so beautiful!
    They cheered when he was gone too and then it was the time for the cavalry charge with the barrel organ playing marching music and Robert Gower telling about the glorious battle of Blenheim. The little pony came thundering into the ring with its harness stuck full of bright coloured flags and above them all the red cross of St George. Robert Gower explained that this symbolized the Duke of Marlborough ‘and the Flower of the English Cavalry’.
    The other three ponies came in flying the French flag and while the audience sang the old song ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’, the four ponies charged at each other, their little hooves pounding the earth and churning it up into mud. It was a wonderful show and at the end the little French ponies lay down and died and the victorious English pony galloped around in a victory circle and then reared in the middle of the ring.
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