tail. "Accident!"
he snorted with a fierce look, "it was no accident! it was a cruel,
shameful, cold-blooded act! When I was young I was taken to a place
where these cruel things were done; I was tied up, and made fast so that
I could not stir, and then they came and cut off my long and beautiful
tail, through the flesh and through the bone, and took it away.

"How dreadful!" I exclaimed.

"Dreadful, ah! it was dreadful; but it was not only the pain, though
that was terrible and lasted a long time; it was not only the indignity
of having my best ornament taken from me, though that was bad; but it
was this, how could I ever brush the flies off my sides and my hind legs
any more? You who have tails just whisk the flies off without thinking
about it, and you can't tell what a torment it is to have them settle
upon you and sting and sting, and have nothing in the world to lash them
off with. I tell you it is a lifelong wrong, and a lifelong loss; but
thank heaven, they don't do it now."

"What did they do it for then?" said Ginger.

"For fashion!" said the old horse with a stamp of his foot; "for
fashion! if you know what that means; there was not a well-bred young
horse in my time that had not his tail docked in that shameful way, just
as if the good God that made us did not know what we wanted and what
looked best."

"I suppose it is fashion that makes them strap our heads up with those
horrid bits that I was tortured with in London," said Ginger.

"Of course it is," said he; "to my mind, fashion is one of the wickedest
things in the world. Now look, for instance, at the way they serve dogs,
cutting off their tails to make them look plucky, and shearing up their
pretty little ears to a point to make them both look sharp, forsooth. I
had a dear friend once, a brown terrier; 'Skye' they called her. She was
so fond of me that she never would sleep out of my stall; she made
her bed under the manger, and there she had a litter of five as pretty
little puppies as need be; none were drowned, for they were a valuable
kind, and how pleased she was with them! and when they got their eyes
open and crawled about, it was a real pretty sight; but one day the man
came and took them all away; I thought he might be afraid I should tread
upon them. But it was not so; in the evening poor Skye brought them back
again, one by one in her mouth; not the happy little things that they
were, but bleeding and crying pitifully; they had all ha