Page:Jean Webster--Much ado about Peter.djvu/234

226 different emotions struggling for supremacy in his freckled face; then he plunged his hands deep into his pockets and turned down the lane with an attempt at a swagger as he passed the stable door. At the paddock gate Toddles poked his shaggy little head through the bars and whinnied insistently. But Bobby, instead of bestowing the expected lump of sugar, shoved him viciously with his elbow and scuffed on. He seated himself precariously on the top rail of the pasture fence and fell to digging holes in the wood with his new knife, cogitating meanwhile the two alternatives he had been invited to consider.

They appealed to him as equally revolting. Only that morning he had carelessly informed the boys that his father was going to buy him a mustang—a brown and white circus mustang that was trained to stand on its hind legs. The humiliation of losing the horse was more than he could face. Yet, on the other hand, to be beaten like a stable-boy for telling a lie!