Jill Enjoys Her Ponies by Ruby Ferguson

Author:Ruby Ferguson [Ferguson, Ruby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jane Badger Books

12

Fun On The Common

THE next morning Mummy said, “What are you two girls going to do today?” I said that Ann was coming round and we were going for a ride, and would probably meet Diana Bush and her brother James who were back from London. Cecilia said that in that case she would sit in the orchard and embroider something for the handicrafts exhibition.

Mummy said, “Nonsense, you must go with the others, on Jill’s bike, and have a ride on Rapide when you get to the Common.”

Cecilia (who in spite of all that she said about horsy people rather fancied herself as a rider, and held the weird theory that nobody needed lessons and all one had to do was to hang on to the pony and urge it to dash madly about) was taken with this idea, but said she hadn’t any clothes. So Mummy produced her own very nice brown slacks and a matching silk shirt, and Cecilia put them on. They made her look very sophisticated, and she walked about in front of the long glass in Mummy’s room until I felt sick.

I said cheekily, “Come on, Horrible. Ann’s been waiting for ages.”

Ann had George, I took Rapide, and Cecilia rode the bike. When we came to the steep hill we dismounted and led the ponies up, but Cecilia stood on her pedals and rode up to the top, where she waited for us in a very showing-off way.

“Do you walk up all the hills?” she said. “You’ll make the ponies soft.”

We said that we weren’t anxious to start a morning’s riding with blown and sweaty ponies, and Cecilia said that horses in good condition were never blown and sweaty, but of course riding grass-fed ponies we wouldn’t know.

Ann said to me, “Does she know anything about riding?” and I said, “No, she makes it up as she goes on.”

When we got to the Common we met Diana and James, and strangely enough Cecilia took to them at once. Just as everything that Ann and I did was wrong, everything that Diana and James did was right. Diana was slim and tall and was riding a very graceful pony called Silvia, and James who was seventeen was on a spirited cob which really belonged to his father.

I don’t know if you have noticed how a boy always shows off when he is with girls. James showed off disgustingly. He did a circus trick of vaulting onto the cob, and then gave a rocky exhibition of the gallop with crossed stirrups and folded arms. Diana said, “He is a fool, Daddy has told him not to do that,” but Cecilia was impressed.

James jumped a ditch and made a perfect landing, more by good luck than anything else, as I saw him clutch the cob’s mane and nearly lose his seat, but Cecilia clapped and said, “I say, you are most frightfully good!”

“Oh, I’m not so hot really,” said James, looking conceited.

“If you ask me, James,” said Diana in a sisterly way, “you did a rotten jump there.

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