Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Human-animal communication -- Juvenile fiction
“I would like a pair like yours,” said the horse—“only green. They’ll
keep the sun out of my eyes while I’m plowing the Fifty-Acre Field.”
“Certainly,” said the Doctor. “Green ones you shall have.”
“You know, the trouble is, Sir,” said the plow-horse as the Doctor
opened the front door to let him out—“the trouble is that _anybody_
thinks he can doctor animals—just because the animals don’t complain.
As a matter of fact it takes a much cleverer man to be a really good
animal-doctor than it does to be a good people’s doctor. My farmer’s
boy thinks he knows all about horses. I wish you could see him—his face
is so fat he looks as though he had no eyes—and he has got as much
brain as a potato-bug. He tried to put a mustard-plaster on me last
week.”
“Where did he put it?” asked the Doctor.
“Oh, he didn’t put it anywhere—on me,” said the horse. “He only tried
to. I kicked him into the duck-pond.”
“Well, well!” said the Doctor.
“I’m a pretty quiet creature as a rule,” said the horse—“very patient
with people—don’t make much fuss. But it was bad enough to have that
vet giving me the wrong medicine. And when that red-faced booby started
to monkey with me, I just couldn’t bear it any more.”
“Did you hurt the boy much?” asked the Doctor.
“Oh, no,” said the horse. “I kicked him in the right place. The vet’s
looking after him now. When will my glasses be ready?”
“I’ll have them for you next week,” said the Doctor. “Come in again
Tuesday—Good morning!”
[Illustration: “He could see as well as ever”]
Then John Dolittle got a fine, big pair of green spectacles; and the
plow-horse stopped going blind in one eye and could see as well as ever.
And soon it became a common sight to see farm-animals wearing glasses
in the country round Puddleby; and a blind horse was a thing unknown.
And so it was with all the other animals that were brought to him. As
soon as they found that he could talk their language, they told him
where the pain was and how they felt, and of course it was easy for him
to cure them.
[Illustration: “They came at once to his house on the edge of the town”]
Now all these animals went back and told their brothers and friends
that there was a doctor in the little house with the big garden who
really _was_ a doctor. And whenever any creatures got sick—not only
horses and cows and dogs—but all the little things of the fields, like
harvest-mice and water-voles, badgers and bats, they came at once to
his house on the edge of the town, so that his big garden was nearly
always crowded with animals trying to get in to see him.
There were so many that came that he had to have special doors made for
the different kinds. He wrote “HORSES” over the front door, “COWS” over
the side door, and “SHEEP” on the kitchen door. Each kind of animal
had a separate door—even the mice had a tiny tunnel made for them into
the cellar, where they waited patiently in rows for the Doctor to come
round to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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