The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
Children's literature
short dash at him, and, as the terrified African disappeared around
the corner of the hospital, she would wheel, and, with a face
bright as a happy child's, come trotting to the window for me to
pet her. I shouted to the groom to go back to the stable, for I had
no doubt but that she would return to her stall when I closed the
window. Rejoiced at the permission, he departed. After some thirty
minutes, the last ten of which she was standing with her slim,
delicate head in my lap, while I braided her foretop and combed out
her silken mane, I lifted her head, and, patting her softly on
either cheek, told her that she must 'go.' I gently pushed her head
out of the window and closed it, and then, holding up my hand, with
the palm turned toward her, charged her, making the appropriate
motion, to 'go away right straight back to her stable.' For a
moment she stood looking steadily at me, with an indescribable
expression of hesitation and surprise in her clear, liquid eyes,
and then, turning lingeringly, walked slowly out of the yard.
"Twice a day for nearly a month, while I lay in the hospital, did
Gulnare visit me. At the appointed hour the groom would slip her
headstall, and, without a word of command, she would dart out of
the stable, and, with her long, leopard-like lope, go sweeping down
the street and come dashing into the hospital yard, checking
herself with the same glad neigh at my window; nor did she ever
once fail, at the closing of the sash, to return directly to her
stall. The groom informed me that every morning and evening, when
the hour of her visit drew near, she would begin to chafe and
worry, and, by pawing and pulling at the halter, advertise him that
it was time for her to be released.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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