about her first place.

"After my breaking in," she said, "I was bought by a dealer to match
another chestnut horse. For some weeks he drove us together, and then we
were sold to a fashionable gentleman, and were sent up to London. I had
been driven with a check-rein by the dealer, and I hated it worse
than anything else; but in this place we were reined far tighter, the
coachman and his master thinking we looked more stylish so. We were
often driven about in the park and other fashionable places. You who
never had a check-rein on don't know what it is, but I can tell you it
is dreadful.

"I like to toss my head about and hold it as high as any horse; but
fancy now yourself, if you tossed your head up high and were obliged to
hold it there, and that for hours together, not able to move it at all,
except with a jerk still higher, your neck aching till you did not know
how to bear it. Besides that, to have two bits instead of one--and mine
was a sharp one, it hurt my tongue and my jaw, and the blood from my
tongue colored the froth that kept flying from my lips as I chafed and
fretted at the bits and rein. It was worst when we had to stand by the
hour waiting for our mistress at some grand party or entertainment, and
if I fretted or stamped with impatience the whip was laid on. It was
enough to drive one mad."

"Did not your master take any thought for you?" I said.

"No," said she, "he only cared to have a stylish turnout, as they
call it; I think he knew very little about horses; he left that to his
coachman, who told him I had an irritable temper! that I had not been
well broken to the check-rein, but I should soon get used to it; but he