him, and his hands were small
and plump. His legs were rather short, and he walked and ran with quick,
nipping steps, just like a pony; and you would have thought of a pony when
you looked at him, even if that had not been his nickname.

[Illustration: "BEING DRESSED SO WELL WAS ONE OF THE WORST THINGS
THAT WAS DONE TO HIM BY HIS MOTHER"]

That very thing of his being dressed so well was one of the worst things
that was done to him by his mother, who was always disgracing him before
the other boys, though she may not have known it. She never was willing
to have him go barefoot, and if she could she would have kept his shoes
on him the whole summer; as it was, she did keep them on till all the
other boys had been barefoot so long that their soles were as hard as
horn; and they could walk on broken glass, or anything, and had stumped
the nails off their big toes, and had grass cuts under their little ones,
and yarn tied into them, before Pony Baker was allowed to take his shoes
off in the spring. He would have taken them off and gone barefoot without
his mother's knowing it, and many of the boys said that he ought to do it;
but then she would have found it out by the look of his feet when he went
to bed, and maybe told his father about it.

Very likely his father would not have cared so much; sometimes he would
ask Pony's mother why she did not turn the boy barefoot with the other
boys, and then she would ask Pony's father if he wanted the child to take
his death of cold; and that would hush him up, for Pony once had a little
brother that died.

Pony had nothing but sisters, after that, and this was another thing that
kept him from having a fair chance with the other fellows. His mother
wanted him to play with his sisters, and she did not care, or else she did
not know, that a girl-boy was about the meanest thing there was, and that
if you played with girls you could not help being a girl-boy. Pony liked
to play with his sisters well enough when there were no boys around, but
when there were his mother did not act as if she could not see any
difference. The girls themselves were not so bad, and they often coaxed
their mother to let him go off with the other boys, when she would not
have let him without. But even then, if it was going in swimming, or
fishing, or skating before the ice was very thick, she would show that she
thought he was too little to take care of himself, and would make some big
boy promise that he w