oot-jack, was set awkwardly on an ewed neck.

For this pitiful, ungainly little figure only two in all the world had
any feeling other than contempt. One of these, of course, was old Kate,
the sorrel mare who mothered him. She gazed at him with sad old eyes
blinded by that maternal love common to all species, sighed with huge
content as he nuzzled for his breakfast, and believed him to be the
finest colt that ever saw a stable. The other was Lafe, the chore boy,
who, when Farmer Perkins had stirred the little fellow roughly with his
boot-toe as he expressed his deep dissatisfaction, made reparation by
gently stroking the baby colt and bringing an old horse-blanket to wrap
him in. Old Kate understood. Lafe read gratitude in the big, sorrowful
mother eyes.

Months later, when the colt had learned to balance himself on the
spindly legs, the old sorrel led him proudly about the pasture, showing
him tufts of sweet new spring grass, and taking him to the brook, where
were tender and juicy cowslips, finely suited to milk-teeth.

In time the slender legs thickened, the chest deepened, the barrel
filled out, the head became less ungainly. As if to make up for these
improvements, the colt's markings began to set. They took the shapes of
a saddle-stripe, three white stockings, and an irregular white blaze
covering one side of his face and patching an eye. On chest and belly
the mother sorrel came out rather sharply, but on the rest of him was
that peculiar blending which gives the blue roan shade, a color
unpleasing to the critical eye, and one that lowers the market value.

Lafe, however, found the colt good to look upon. But Lafe himself had no
heritage of beauty. He had not even grown up to his own long, thin legs.
Possibly no boy ever had hair of such a homely red. Certainly few could
have been found with bigger freckles. But it was his eyes which
accented the plainness of his features. You know the color of a ripe
gooseberry, that indefinable faint purplish tint; well, that was it.

If Lafe found no fault with Blue Blazes, the colt found no fault with
Lafe. At first the colt would sniff suspiciously at him from under the
shelter of the old sorrel's neck, but in time he came to regard Lafe
without fear, and to suffer a hand on his flank or the chore boy's arm
over his shoulder. So between them was established a gentle confidence
beautiful to see.

Fortunate it would have been had Lafe been master of horse on the
Perkins