Both boys had learned to guide Frey about the yard with a subtle lean of their bodies, and Frances had even survived a gentle trot without falling off. Of course, Frey had modified his gait to hobby horse smoothness. He was, as always, the perfect steed for each of my two youthful spitfires who liked to yell giddy-up when they were still only unbalanced collections of body parts on his high and overly broad back. But although they were short on riding skills, their enthusiasm and tenacity made up for the rest.
Frances had broken through his fear of the b and d reading challenge and was progressing. He was already starting on the easiest of the beginner books that Mrs. Smith had stored in the attic boxes. Frances had a tendency to give up easily, and I’d been alarmed that he might have some other problem in his ability to sound out words, but instead of trying to persuade him to continue with Mrs. Smith’s beginning readers, he and I had written stories together. Since we made the tales all about Willow, Frey, and the people he knew, plus pancakes, (We always had to include the word pancakes.) his resistance to reading seemed to lessen, and he stopped hesitating and was doing better.
After that, he would often take his stories to Carlo and read the whole collection to his little brother. Everyone enjoyed that. Even Willow would draw near and sit beside the boys to hear the latest fictional tale of how Carlo and Frances had found a magic rock and wished themselves into the land of Tinker where they ate pancakes every day and slept with a cat named Willow.
Frey was often part of the tale. too. He galloped them into their adventures. Increasingly Frank was in them, too. Mrs. Penn and I seemed mere after thoughts, only fitted inside the tale because Frances thought we should be involved. Mrs. Penn was always placed in the kitchen making pancakes, while I was usually outside grooming Frey. (If that was how Frances saw the females in his life, I’d have to work on his bias, but for the moment, I just deemed it a success that he wanted to read and write.)