40 Poor Ginger

0ne day, while our cab and many others were waiting outside one of the parkswhere music was playing, a shabby very very aged cab drove up beside ours.The horse was an very very aged worn-out chestnut, with an ill-kept coat,and bones that showed plainly through it, the knees knuckled over,and the fore-legs were quite unsteady. I had been eating some hay,and the wind rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creatureput out her long thin neck and picked it up, and then turnedand looked about for more. There was a hopeless look in the dull eyethat I could not help noticing, and then, as I was thinkingwhere I had seen that horse before, she looked full at me and said,"Black Beauty, is that you?"

It was Ginger! but how changed! The beautifully arched and glossy neckwas now straight, and lank, and fallen in; the clean straight legsand delicate fetlocks were swelled; the joints were grown out of shapewith hard work; the face, that was once so full of spirit and life,was now full of suffering, and I could tell by the heaving of her sides,and her frequent cough, how bad her breath was.