Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/280

248 into it? Would he swerve to the right—to the left! But even as Kit calculated the chances, the other had reached it. He tripped, he stumbled, he recovered himself. He tripped again, again he stumbled, and with an angry oath which reached Kit's ears and recalled with comical force Judy's shock of yesterday, he fell his full length on the track. By the time he had well regained his footing, Kit had passed him and was under the wire.

Half an hour later Annie was speeding Judy and Kit up the avenue toward home at a rollicking pace. No one knew better than Annie that Kit had won. Indeed, had he not told her so himself as he rubbed his cheek against her nose before climbing in beside Judy?

"Did you see me get there, old girl?" And she had replied with a happy and intelligent neigh that she had seen him get there, and was proud of him.

The world was not quite right with Annie. Down in the large pleasant pasture field she spent much of her time in sad rumination. She had little else to do these days and might be seen standing for hours at a time with her chin resting lazily on the gate, which shut her in from the highway stretching along by the river. Sometimes Judy stood there too, looking out on the road, with her arm about Annie's neck.

But even Judy's arm could not console her. Perhaps it only served to remind her more forcibly of how sadly she missed from her neck another arm, a smaller one, and two dear little stirruped feet from her sides, and a dear little figure from her back. What a time it seemed since she had felt them. How she longed for a race down the road with that light buoyant weight on her back.

Rh