And this time he did not even try
to hide the shake in his voice.
"Oh!" breathed Lydia Ann blissfully. "Samuel, I--I think I'll take a
fig, please!"
Jupiter Ann
It was only after serious consideration that Miss Prue had bought the
little horse, Jupiter, and then she changed the name at once. For a
respectable spinster to drive any sort of horse was bad enough in Miss
Prue's opinion; but to drive a heathen one! To replace "Jupiter" she
considered "Ann" a sensible, dignified, and proper name, and "Ann" she
named him, regardless of age, sex, or "previous condition of servitude."
The villagers accepted the change--though with modifications; the horse
was known thereafter as "Miss Prue's Jupiter Ann."
Miss Prue had said that she wanted a safe, steady horse; one that would
not run, balk, or kick. She would not have bought any horse, indeed, had
it not been that the way to the post office, the store, the church, and
everywhere else, had grown so unaccountably long--Miss Prue was
approaching her sixtieth birthday. The horse had been hers now a month,
and thus far it had been everything that a dignified, somewhat timid
spinster could wish it to be. Fortunately--or unfortunately, as one may
choose to look at it--Miss Prue did not know that in the dim recesses of
Jupiter's memory there lurked the smell of the turf, the feel of the
jockey's coaxing touch, and the sound of a triumphant multitude shouting
his name; in Miss Prue's estimation the next deadly sin to treason and
murder was horse racing.
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