The Georges and the Jewels by Jane Smiley

fence, where a girl in fancy riding clothes was sitting. The lady said, “Abby, this is Melinda. She’s the girl who’s looking for a pony.”
    Melinda had white eyelashes and big eyes, which made her look like she had just seen a ghost. She reached out and put her fingers on the pony’s neck, then she said, in a very low voice, “Is he nice?”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “Is he
always
nice?”
    “Well, we’ve only had him for about six months, but he’s always been during that time.”
    “You’re a good rider.”
    “But he’s well behaved anyway.” I waved toward Gloria. “She can’t ride very well, and he’s always fine with her, too.”
    “My dad thinks I should have a show pony.”
    I jumped off.
    Getting Melinda onto the pony was a big job, as she was practically limp. It was like she could hardly hold herself up as soon as she stepped inside the ring. For one thing, she acted like she was sure one of the other horses might come runningat us, and she kept flinching and looking over toward them. The lady gave her a leg up, but as Melinda bent her knee, she sort of crumpled. Finally, since Melinda was small, the lady just put her hands around her waist and set her on the pony. It was Gloria and I who put her feet into the stirrups. The lady fixed the reins in her hands. Melinda closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and gave the pony a kick. He walked away. He looked a little surprised to see me standing there, knowing that someone was on his back.
    The thing was, she wasn’t a bad rider. Her heels were down and her thumbs were up and and she sat in the middle of the pony and went with the motion. It was hard to figure out why she was so scared. The pony understood the words “walk,” “trot,” and “halt” perfectly well and followed every one of the lady’s commands. They didn’t try a canter. I saw that a life here would be just what a nice pony deserved—not much to do and plenty of time to do it in.
    After Melinda got down, Daddy and the lady went off to one side and parleyed for a while, and then he waved me over. He said, “Miss Slater would like to ask you a favor, Abby, dear.”
    I adopted my most respectful look. She said, “Well, you know, Abby, Melinda’s dad would like to see the pony as a good investment, and he is a good investment, but I think he’ll need to be shown before Melinda will be ready to show him, so I wonder if you would mind coming over from time to time and taking him in our shows?”
    I glanced at Daddy, then said, “I haven’t shown English before.” I showed western pleasure as a rule.
    “But you’re a good rider and you say you’ve jumped the pony a lot, so we can try it. If the pony can’t show, I’m afraid that Melinda’s father—”
    Won’t go for it. They didn’t have to tell me that. So I nodded. Daddy said, “Miss Slater, that’s very kind of you. Abby is eager for all kinds of experience—” and they shook hands. We spent another half an hour with Miss Slater. She gave the pony a real going-over, including holding each leg up really high and then having the pony trot off as soon as she dropped it, but the pony trotted off sound. She looked at his eyes and his teeth again and peered into his ears and ran her fingers the wrong way in his hair to check for funguses or parasites. She even spread apart the hair on the dock of his tail because if a horse has worms, he’ll rub his tail. But she didn’t find anything, and so she wrote Daddy a check, which he put in his pocket with a serious shake of the hand. It wasn’t until we were practically to the gate of the whole area that he started whooping and grinning. Of course, how much he got for the pony wasn’t my business or Gloria’s, but I knew he’d start bragging about it at some point. All he said to us was, “Well, girls, we can say a prayer of thanks, because the Lord has been good to us today.”
    Gloria had been my friend for so long that even though she didn’t go to our