“Then the boys will have something easier to feed Frey when they want to, and the grain will make Frey’s coat shiny again. The brush and curry comb will help with that, too. I had such things at my shack where I lived, but I had to leave in a big rush. I forgot to grab them. Since then I’ve been using leaves, but Frey likes to roll, which really pushes the dirt and mud down deep. With the proper tools, you’ll see how beautiful he truly is.”
I realized suddenly that I was being overly loquacious, although both Mrs. Penn and the officer were watching and listening intently. What was so interesting in what I’d said? Surely, they knew about horse grooming. Did they wonder if I’d been careless or selfish for not packing the things Frey needed?
It wasn’t like me to talk about myself, and I never babbled. I was normally tighter of lip than Mr. Cutworthy, who was a confirmed hermit, only entered the village for an occasional food item. It was said that he didn’t even speak when he came into the general store, only grunted and pointed.
Not that I was a grunter. I answered questions in as succinct a manner as I could. I’d learned long ago that people wanted to talk at me and not listen to anything I had to say. And why would I be worthy of voicing my opinion anyway? I was basically uneducated, although Old Mother used to say that I seemed smarter than the average villager and claimed that I was skillfully articulate.
In fact, she once warned me that I should hide being too erudite, a word I had to look up on my daily library visit. But how could the brain, as it skimmed through appropriate words to use in the context of a sentence, discard a word just because others might resent its scholastic nature?
I wondered endlessly about such things, always questioning my nature and the world around me. Old Mother said that such reflections would truthfully benefit everyone. But she also advised me to keep such thoughts to myself. Perhaps I had erred here, although I didn’t think I’d used any of the bookish vocabulary Old Mother had always counseled me to avoid.
The cart/wagon was pulling out of the yard. I watched as the man stopped, then closed the gate. I left Frey to go check that the gate’s lever mechanism had been properly fastened. It wasn’t that Frey would run away, but he might get into mischief. He had no hesitations about eating people’s front yard flowers or nosing at their windows to see what they were doing inside. And if there was a goat around, he’d chase it. He’d never forgiven the one that had chewed on his tail.