Dora at Follyfoot by Monica Dickens

Author:Monica Dickens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849399357
Publisher: Andersen Press Ltd

Chapter 13

THERE WERE SEVERAL young horses up for sale, unbroken, or still very green. One of the best that came out was a strawberry roan, polo pony type, with an exquisite square-nosed head and a straight, springy action. Among the crowd, Dora spotted the Nicholsons: father, mother and Chip, watching it from the rail, sharp eyed.

‘New Forest-Arab cross,’ the auctioneer described it. ‘Rising four, well broke, but green. You’ll never see a likelier one, ladies and gentlemen.’

‘Likely to go lame,’ said a grumbly man next to Dora, who had been crabbing about all the horses.

He was evidently a well-known character here. People laughed, and the auctioneer said, ‘I’d back his legs before yours, Fred.’

‘Back ’em to kick,’ Fred grumbled.

The young roan was very nervous. He threw up his head and stared and snorted. He pulled in circles round the girl who held him. When she lunged him to show how he moved, he put down his head and bucked round the ring, squealing.

‘I wouldn’t take a chance on him,’ the grumbly man said, but the bids were going ahead. You could not always see who made them, because they did not call out. They nodded, or raised a finger without raising their hand from the rail, or coughed, or moved their catalogue slightly. When the roan pony was sold, fairly cheap for what he might become, Dora did not know who had bought him, until she saw Mrs Nicholson lead the pony away, jerking his head down hard when he threw it up in fear of her and the crowd. Dora thought of a slave sold at auction to the highest bidder, powerless over his life, his future unknown.

When she went to get a cup of tea, she found herself standing next to Chip in the line waiting at the greasy snack bar.

‘That was a nice pony your parents bought,’ she said.

‘Mm-hm.’ Chip’s deadpan gaze considered where she had seen Dora before.

‘Is it for you?’

‘Till we sell him. I’m going to train him for the race. If he wins, he’ll fetch a big price.’

‘What race?’

‘The Moonlight Steeplechase. At Mr Wheeler’s. You know.’

Dora had heard of the Moonlight Pony Steeplechase, which the rich old man at Broadlands organised every year. But it was a posh social affair, with all the ‘Best People’ in the neighbourhood invited to a champagne buffet before the race, far removed from life at Follyfoot.

But now she found herself envying Chip with the lovely roan pony to train, and the excitement of racing him under the moon over the fences and fields of the pony steeplechase course at Broadlands. And she boasted, ‘We may be entering too.’

‘You’re much too old,’ Chip said, as if Dora was fifty.

‘We have a rider.’

‘What on?’ Chip was not really interested, but the snack-bar woman was pouring beer and jokes for a lot of men, and it was a long wait for tea.

‘That bay pony, remember, that you sold to those people for their boy. He’s jumping like a stag, you wouldn’t know him.

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