to the city, as the boys called the large town
twenty miles away from the Boy's Town, he might get Pony a present or he
might not, but he would not promise, because once when he promised, he
forgot it, and then Pony's mother scolded him.

There were some boys' fathers in the Boy's Town who were good fathers, and
let their children do whatever they pleased, and Pony could not help
feeling rather ashamed before these boys. If one of that sort of fellows'
fathers passed a crowd of boys, they would not take any notice of their
boys; but if Pony's father came along, he would very likely say, "Well,
Pony!" or something like that, and then all the fellows would hollo,
"Well, Pony! Well, Pony!" and make fun of his father, when he got past,
and walk like him, or something, so that Pony would be so mad he would
hardly know what to do. He hated to ask his father not to speak to him, or
look at him, when he was with the fellows, but it seemed to him as if his
father ought to know better without asking.

There were a great many things like that which no good father would have
done, but the thing that made Pony lose all patience, and begin getting
ready to run off right away, was the way his father behaved when Pony got
mad at the teacher one day, and brought his books home, and said he was
not going back to that school any more. The reason was because the teacher
had put Pony back from third reader to the second and made him go into a
class of little fellows not more than seven years old. It happened one
morning, after a day when Pony had read very badly in the afternoon, and
though he had explained that he had read badly because the weather was
so hot, the teacher said he might try it in the second reader till the
weather changed, at any rate; and the whole school laughed. The worst of
it was that Pony was really a very good reader, and could speak almost the
best of any of the boys; but that afternoon he was lazy, and would not pay
attention.

At recess, after the teacher had put him back, all the fellows came round
and asked him what he was going to do now; and he just shut his teeth and
told them they would see; and at noon they did see. As soon as school was
dismissed, or even before, Pony put all his books together, and his slate,
and tied them with his slate-pencil string, and twitched his hat down off
the peg, and strutted proudly out of the room, so that not only the boys
but the teacher, too, could see that he was leavin