Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/278

Rh anything to see the things the two of them did. They helped the Italian on with his coat, they pulled off his rubbers, they took his coat away and brought him a chair, and dragged a table up to it. They brought him letters and papers, and rang bells, and rolled barrels, and swung the Italian in a big swing, and jumped a rope, and walked up and down steps—they just went around that stage as handy with their teeth as two boys would be with their hands, and they seemed to understand every word their master said to them.

"The best trick of all was telling the time and doing questions in arithmetic. The Italian pulled his watch out of his pocket and showed it to the first pony, whose name was Diamond, and said 'What time is it?' The pony looked at it, then scratched four times with his fore-foot on the platform. The Italian said, 'That's good—four o'clock. But it's a few minutes after four—how many?' The pony scratched again five times. The Italian showed his watch to the audience, and said that it was just five minutes past four. Then he asked the pony how old he was. He scratched four times. That meant four years. He asked him how many days in a week there were, how many months in a year, and he gave him some questions in addition and subtraction, and the pony answered them all correctly. Of course the Italian was giving him some sign, but though we watched him closely we couldn't make out what it was. At last, he told the pony that he had been very good, and had done his lessons well; if it would rest him, he might be naughty a little while. All of a sudden a wicked look came into the creature's eyes. He turned around, and kicked up his heels at his master, he pushed over the table and chairs, and knocked down a blackboard where he had