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Authors: Meg Rosoff
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heart.
It didn’t have a name at first, though the little ones called them Dicken and Dog. And despite Dog being a bitch, and despite Pell wanting to come up with something better, the names stuck.
Sixteen
P ell’s father’s family were clergymen of the worst sort: charming, immoral, and unkempt, with livings too small to keep a family and behavior unbecoming men of God. Each generation spawned another more engaging and worthless than the last, capable of providing neither a living nor spiritual guidance, unless someone needed guiding to an inn. They had always tended toward the outer edges of religion, and Pell’s father, educated to a point that made his position impossible in every social sphere, compounded the sins of his fathers by declaring himself a nonconformist, a Primitive Methodist with a firm belief in God’s love for the poor and the weak—which Pell considered a lucky coincidence given the state of his finances and temper. As for her mother’s family, what they lacked in fecklessness they made up with a talent for hopeless marriages.
Pa’s best quality was the fact that he was so often gone. What he got up to while preaching out on the road remained a mystery that no one in the family wished to solve, but there were rumors, and one day he arrived home with a boy baby swaddled up tight in the shape of a bean, and turned the child over to Mam to bring up as her own. Pa never said whose baby it was, but the dark hair and huge eyes matched one or two of his other children well enough to raise certain conjectures.
Birdie’s family were the other sort—the hardworking, honest, resourceful sort of family. He had a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather, all with a lifelong dedication to lifestock. It was Birdie’s family taught Pell everything she wasn’t born knowing about animals, and it was Birdie gave her Jack. Not that Jack was the sort of gift a person would receive gladly.
From the start, he was an odd-looking creature, with big raw joints under his dull coat, and every bit of him awkward and badly attached, or so it seemed. His dam, a plain, bad-tempered thing with not much to recommend her, first failed to produce enough milk and then compounded the insult by losing patience and kicking him away. None of the other mares would have him.
Birdie’s father was all for letting him die, not believing there’d be much use in him, but after a good deal of begging and bothering he handed the foal over to Birdie, who handed him over to Pell. She recognized at once that he was more a burden of work than a gift, but she took pity on him, hauling him up onto her lap and dipping her fingers in mare’s milk so he could suck. And eventually the poor thing got so displeased with her interference that he picked himself up, shook her off, and drank from the bucket all on his own as if to say, “There, I hope you’re happy now.”
It was her first hint that she’d been given something worth having.
For a time, they stabled him with a cross-eyed pony scarcely bigger than a dog, but it was Pell he thought was his mam. Birdie’s dad shook his head at the two of them, thinking what a waste of time it was rearing the ugly thing. But he was a stubborn little nix with a magnet eye, and at the end of a year his coat had started to turn from dull black to gray, and against all expectation the bits that didn’t fit looked to be joining up. At three he was pure white except for his muzzle and a black mark the size of a penny on his left flank. He had a big intelligent head, a thick arched neck, and gaits so sweeping and free, no one ever thought to wonder why she’d saved him. It was said that Arab horses had been bred to New Forest ponies a century ago in an attempt to improve the breed, and once or twice every generation the Arab blood emerged. Even if you hadn’t known about the rogue ancestor, you might have guessed by the size and the shape of him, so different did he look from the rest of the
It didn’t have a name at first, though the little ones called them Dicken and Dog. And despite Dog being a bitch, and despite Pell wanting to come up with something better, the names stuck.
Sixteen
P ell’s father’s family were clergymen of the worst sort: charming, immoral, and unkempt, with livings too small to keep a family and behavior unbecoming men of God. Each generation spawned another more engaging and worthless than the last, capable of providing neither a living nor spiritual guidance, unless someone needed guiding to an inn. They had always tended toward the outer edges of religion, and Pell’s father, educated to a point that made his position impossible in every social sphere, compounded the sins of his fathers by declaring himself a nonconformist, a Primitive Methodist with a firm belief in God’s love for the poor and the weak—which Pell considered a lucky coincidence given the state of his finances and temper. As for her mother’s family, what they lacked in fecklessness they made up with a talent for hopeless marriages.
Pa’s best quality was the fact that he was so often gone. What he got up to while preaching out on the road remained a mystery that no one in the family wished to solve, but there were rumors, and one day he arrived home with a boy baby swaddled up tight in the shape of a bean, and turned the child over to Mam to bring up as her own. Pa never said whose baby it was, but the dark hair and huge eyes matched one or two of his other children well enough to raise certain conjectures.
Birdie’s family were the other sort—the hardworking, honest, resourceful sort of family. He had a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather, all with a lifelong dedication to lifestock. It was Birdie’s family taught Pell everything she wasn’t born knowing about animals, and it was Birdie gave her Jack. Not that Jack was the sort of gift a person would receive gladly.
From the start, he was an odd-looking creature, with big raw joints under his dull coat, and every bit of him awkward and badly attached, or so it seemed. His dam, a plain, bad-tempered thing with not much to recommend her, first failed to produce enough milk and then compounded the insult by losing patience and kicking him away. None of the other mares would have him.
Birdie’s father was all for letting him die, not believing there’d be much use in him, but after a good deal of begging and bothering he handed the foal over to Birdie, who handed him over to Pell. She recognized at once that he was more a burden of work than a gift, but she took pity on him, hauling him up onto her lap and dipping her fingers in mare’s milk so he could suck. And eventually the poor thing got so displeased with her interference that he picked himself up, shook her off, and drank from the bucket all on his own as if to say, “There, I hope you’re happy now.”
It was her first hint that she’d been given something worth having.
For a time, they stabled him with a cross-eyed pony scarcely bigger than a dog, but it was Pell he thought was his mam. Birdie’s dad shook his head at the two of them, thinking what a waste of time it was rearing the ugly thing. But he was a stubborn little nix with a magnet eye, and at the end of a year his coat had started to turn from dull black to gray, and against all expectation the bits that didn’t fit looked to be joining up. At three he was pure white except for his muzzle and a black mark the size of a penny on his left flank. He had a big intelligent head, a thick arched neck, and gaits so sweeping and free, no one ever thought to wonder why she’d saved him. It was said that Arab horses had been bred to New Forest ponies a century ago in an attempt to improve the breed, and once or twice every generation the Arab blood emerged. Even if you hadn’t known about the rogue ancestor, you might have guessed by the size and the shape of him, so different did he look from the rest of the
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