spite of the way I knew I
must have looked myself, with snow all over me and with a ripped
trouser leg and everything, Mr. Black looked even worse as he went
racing down that road after his horse, yelling for the horse to
stop.... The very minute he went swishing past us, I noticed that his
hands were black with soot, as also was his face, and he really looked
like a wild man, and for some reason even while everything else was
all topsy turvy in my mind, I couldn't help but remember Poetry's
poetry which went:

"_The Sugar Creek Gang had the worst of teachers,
And 'Black' his named was called;
His round, red face had the homeliest of features;
He was fat and forty and bald_"--

only his face was black as well as his name, and I knew if he hadn't
been bald, his hair would certainly have been all mussed up like mine
is most of the time when my hat is off, only Mr. Black's fur hat was
still on.

Say, Prince certainly wasn't in any horse mood to stop, on account of
being scared, I suppose, what with the smoke pouring out of the
schoolhouse, and all the noise which the stove had made, and with the
gang making a noise and running excitedly, and everything. That horse
with a gate tied to its bridle rein probably was as scared as a dog or
a cat is when a boy that ought to know better ties a tin can to its
tail and shouldn't and it gets scared and runs, and keeps on
running....

Prince kept running and the piece of gate kept swinging in different
directions. Every time the horse turned his head this way or that, the
gate would swing around and sock him in the side and scare him maybe
even worse. I thought how terrible it would be if Prince would get his
feet all tangled up in part of the gate, and fall, and maybe break one
of his legs and have to be killed, which is what nearly always has to
be done to a horse when it breaks one of its legs, on account of you
can't get a horse to be quiet for weeks and months long enough for its
leg to heal. I certainly wouldn't want such a pretty horse to have to
be killed....

* * * * *

Ho hum--say, if I don't get going faster, telling you this story,
it'll be too long to get it into one book and I'll have to finish it
some other time, so here goes just as fast as I can, till I get to the
end....

There we were--the four of us, innocent-faced Little Jim,
dragonfly-eyed Dragonfly, barrel-shaped Poetry, and me, red-haired,
freckle-faced Bi