To resume. When I was about five months old, another mare and foal were put into the paddock. The mare was an old acquaintance of my mother, and the two were soon gossiping together; but the foal was of course a stranger to me. He informed me that his name was Rip, and I told him—what I might have told my readers before—that Mr. Bayne had named me Blossom. This introductory business over, we became excellent friends, and capered about the paddock in fine style. Rip was a better looking foal than I was—he was better bred, and had I believe something of the race-horse in him; he told me that his great-grandfather, on his mother’s side, had nearly won a big race once, and this Rip seemed to be very proud of. I felt sorry for him on account of this weakness—it was so much like a man to be proud of such a ridiculous thing. Rip told me a deal of news which he seemed to have picked up from a number of horses in farmer Martin’s meadow, where he had been with his mother. He knew Boxer, and spoke highly of him as a long suffering and much-enduring horse; but he said that Boxer was getting tired of doing all he could for the farmer at night and getting beaten in the morning. ‘I should not be surprised,’ said Rip in a whisper, ‘if he upsets the farmer in the pond by the “Wheatsheaf,” and leaves him there.’ A few weeks before I should have expressed my approval of this; but my mother’s lesson had borne fruit, and I earnestly hoped that Boxer would not so forget himself. Rip, however, favoured the idea of the pond trick, and said that if Boxer did not carry out his threat he should think he was but a poor, mean-spirited thing. In all this I detected, as my readers have doubtless done, the racing blood of Rip’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side. Those were very happy days in the old paddock. Rip and I enjoyed ourselves amazingly, even when we were left alone, which occasionally happened if our mothers were put into the waggon; but sometimes Giles fetched them for the plough, and then we youngsters went with our mothers and saw the earth ripped up by the terrible implement and smelt the fresh soil as it was turned over into the sunlight. I was always of a sober and reflective turn, and never lost the chance of ruminating upon anything which came under my notice; but Rip was rather giddy—I am afraid I ought to say thoughtless too—and gave his mother a deal of anxiety and trouble. I have heard the poor creature declare a hundred times that he would be the death of her; but Rip always laughed at such declarations, and said that he would grow better some day. ‘If we don’t have some fun now,’ he would say, ‘we never shall. It is all very well for those old fogies to talk, but they were not always so sober as they are now, I give you my word.’