But this wicked intention vanished while
the child danced around him in joy and wonder. Never yet had so many
compliments been showered on him. Here, surely, was more the manner of
a slave than of a master. And how lightly the child rode him, with
never a tug or a kick! And oh, how splendid it was to be flying thus
through the air! Horses were made to be ridden; and he had never
before savoured the true joy of life, for he had never known his own
strength and fleetness. Forward! Backward! Faster, faster! To floor!
To ceiling! Regiments of leaden soldiers watched his wild career.
Noah's quiet sedentary beasts gaped up at him in wonderment--as tiny
to him as the gaping cows in the fields are to you when you pass by in
an express train. This was life indeed! He remembered Katafalto--
remembered Eclipse and the rest nowhere. Aye, thought he, and even
thus must Black Bess have rejoiced along the road to York. And
Bucephalus, skimming under Alexander the plains of Asia, must have had
just this glorious sense of freedom. Only less so! Not Pegasus himself
can have flown more swiftly. Pegasus, at last, became a constellation
in the sky. `Some day,' reflected the rocking-horse, when the ride was
over, `I, too, shall die; and five stars will appear on the nursery
ceiling.
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