the passers-by as produced another loud laugh, as they swept past.
And he plucked the pony's head from the turf with the same startled
movement, and surprised the little animal into a canter of a dozen paces
or so, enough, at least, he hoped, to show those insolent people that he
could go, when he liked. But after that the pony took matters into his
own hand.

It was beginning to be afternoon, which to Geoff meant the decline of
the day, after his two o'clock dinner. He had no dinner, poor child, and
that afternoon languor which the strongest feel, the sense of falling
off and running low, was deepened in him by unusual emptiness, and that
consciousness of wrong which a child has who has missed a meal. Pony,
after _his_ dinner, had a more lively feeling than ever that the stable
at home would be cool and comfortable, and, emboldened by so much salad,
wanted to turn back and risk finding the way. He bolted twice, so that
all Geoff's horsemanship and all his strength were necessary to bring
the little beast round. The little man did it, setting his teeth
with childish rage and determination, digging his heels into the fat
refractory sides, and holding his reins twisted in his little fists with
savage tenacity. But a conflict of this sort is very exhausting, and to
force an unreasonable four-footed creature in the way it does not want
to go requires a strain of all the faculties which it is not easy to
keep up, especially at the age (not all told) of nine. Geoff felt the
tears coming to his eyes; he felt that he would die of shame if any one
saw him thus almost mastered by a pony, yet that he would give anything
in the world to see a known face, some one who would help him home. Not
the phaeton, though, or that man who had offered to "touch him up." When
he heard the wheels again behind him Geoff grew frantic. He laid his
whip about the pony's sides, with a maddening determination not to be
laughed at again. But circumstances were too strong for Geoff. The pony
made a spring forward, stopped suddenly: and Geoff, with a giddy sense
of flying through the air, a horrible consciousness of great hoofs
coming down, lost all knowledge of what was going to happen to him, and
ended in insensibility this wild little flight into the unknown.

It was well for Geoff that some one who had been crossing a field close
by, at this climax of his little history, saw the impending accident,
and sprang over the stile into the road at the deci