"And you know, Pete, that you want me to have the mustang. You said yourself that it was a shame for a big boy like me to be riding Toddles." Peter folded his arms and studied the distance a moment with thoughtful eyes; then he faced his companion with the air of pronouncing an ultimatum. "I'll tell ye what I'll do, Master Bobby, since ye're so anxious to save yer father's feelin's. I'll agree not to mention the matter, an' ye can take yer punishment from me at the end of a strap." Bobby stared. "Do you mean," he gasped, "that you want to whip me?" "Well, no, I can't say as I _want_ to, but I think it's me dooty. If ye was a stable-boy and I caught ye in a lie like that, I'd wallop ye till ye couldn't stand." "I never was whipped in my life!" "The more reason ye need it now. I've often thought, Master Bobby, that a thorough lickin' would do ye good." Bobby sprang to his feet. "Tell him if you want. I don't care!" "Just as ye please. He's over to Shannon Farms now buyin' the mustang. When he gets back an' finds his son is a liar and a coward, he'll be returnin' that horse by telephone." Bobby's flight was suspended while he hung wavering between indignation and desire. "There it is," said Peter. "I won't go back on me word. Either ye keeps a whole skin an' rides Toddles another year, or ye takes yer lickin' like a man an' gets the horse. Ye can have an hour to think it over." He rose and sauntered unconcernedly toward the stables. Bobby stared after him, several different emotions struggling for supremacy in his freckled face; then he plunged his hands deep into his pockets and turned down the lane with an attempt at a swagger as he passed the stable door. At the paddock gate Toddles poked his shaggy little head through the bars and whinnied insistently. But Bobby, instead of bestowing the expected lump of sugar, shoved him viciously with his elbow and scuffed on. He seated himself precariously on the top rail of the pasture fence and fell to digging holes in the wood with his new knife, cogitating meanwhile the two alternatives he had been invited to consider. They appealed to him as equally revolting. Only that morning he had carelessly informed the boys that his father was going to buy him a mustang--a brown and white circus mustang that was trained to stand on its hind legs. The humiliation of losing the horse was more than he could face. Yet, on the other hand, to be beaten like a stable-boy for telling a lie! He had boasted to the Hartridge boys, who did not enjoy such immunity, that he had never received a flogging in his life. He might have stood it from his father--but from Peter! Peter, who had always been his stanchest ally, who, on occasion, had even deviated from the strict truth himself in order to shield Bobby from justice. The boy already had his full quota of parents; he did not relish having Peter usurp the rôle.