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HOME > Children's Novel > Jan of the Windmill A Story of the Plains > CHAPTER XX.
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CHAPTER XX.
 SQUIRE AMMABY AND HIS DAUGHTER.—THE CHEAP JACK DOES BUSINESS ONCE MORE.—THE WHITE HORSE CHANGES MASTERS.  
Squire Ammaby was the most good-natured of men.  He was very fond of his wife, though she was somewhat peevish, with weak health and nerves, and though she seemed daily less able to bear the rough and ready attentions of her husband, and to rely more and more on the advice and assistance of her mother, Lady Craikshaw.  From this it came about that the Squire’s affection for his wife took the shape of wishing Lady Louisa to have every thing that she wished for, and that the very joy of his heart was his little daughter Amabel.
 
Amabel was between three and four years old, and to some extent a prodigy.  She was as tall as an average child of six or seven, and stout in proportion.  The size of her shoes scandalized her grandmother, and once drew tears from Lady Louisa as she reflected on the probable size of Miss Ammaby’s feet by the time she was “presented.”
 
Lady Louisa was tall and weedy; the Squire was tall and robust.  Amabel inherited height on both sides, but in face and in character she was more like her father than her mother.  Indeed, Lady Louisa would close her eyes, and Lady Craikshaw would put up her gold glass at the child, and they would both cry, “Sadly coarse!  Quite an Ammaby!”  Amabel was not coarse, however; but she had a strength and originality of character that must have come from some bygone generation, if it was inherited.  She had a pitying affection for her mother.  With her grandmother she lived at daggers drawn.  She kept up a pretty successful struggle for her own way in the nursery.  She was devoted to her father, when she could get at him, and she poured an almost boundless wealth of affection on every animal that came in her way.
 
An uncle had just given her a Spanish saddle, and her father had promised to buy her a donkey.  He had heard of one, and was going to drive to the town to see the owner.  With great difficulty Amabel had got permission from her mother and grandmother to go with the Squire in the pony carriage.  As she had faithfully promised to “be good,” she submitted to be “well wrapped up,” under her grandmother’s direction, and staggered downstairs in coat, cape, gaiters, comforter, muffatees, and with a Shetland veil over her burning cheeks.  She even displayed a needless zeal by carrying a big shawl in a lump in her arms, which she would give up to no one.
 
“No, no!” she cried, as the Squire tried to take it from her.  “Lift me in, daddy, lift me in!”
 
The Squire laughed, and obeyed her, saying, “Why, bless my soul, Amabel, I think you grow heavier every day.”
 
Amabel came up crimson from some disposal of the shawl after her own ideas, and her eyes twinkled as he spoke, though her fat cheeks kept their gravity.  It was not till they were far on their way that a voice from below the seat cried, “Yap!”
 
“Why, there’s one of the dogs in the carriage,” said the Squire.
 
On which, clinging to one of his arms and caressing him, Amabel confessed, “It’s only the pug, dear daddy.  I brought him in under the shawl.  I did so want him to have a treat too.  And grandmamma is so hard!  She hardly thinks I ought to have treats, and she never thinks of treats for the dogs.”
 
The Squire only laughed, and said she must take care of the dog when they got to the town; and Amabel was encouraged to ask if she might take off the Shetland veil.  Hesitating between his fear of Amabel’s catching cold, and a common-sense conviction that it was ludicrous to dress her according to her invalid mother’s susceptibilities, the Squire was relieved from the responsibility of deciding by Amabel’s promptly exposing her rosy cheeks to the breeze, and they drove on happily to the town.  The Squire had business with the Justices, and Amabel was left at the Crown.  When he came back, Amabel jumped down from the window and the black blind over which she was peeping into the yard, and ran up to her father with tears on her face.
 
“Oh, daddy!” she cried, “dear, good daddy!  I don’t want you to buy me a donkey, I want you to buy me a horse.”
 
“That’s modest!” said the Squire; “but what are you crying for?”
 
“Oh, it’s such a poor horse!  Such a very old, poor horse!” cried Amabel.  And from the window Mr. Ammaby was able to confirm her statements.  It was the Cheap Jack’s white horse, which he had been trying to persuade the landlord to buy as a cab-horse.  More lean, more scarred, more drooping than ever, it was a pitiful sight, now and then raising its soft nose and intelligent eyes to the window, as if it knew what a benevolent little being was standing on a slippery chair, with her arms round the Squire’s neck, pleading its cause.
 
“But when I buy horses,” said the Squire, “I buy young, good ones, not very old and poor ones.”
 
“Oh, but do buy it, daddy!  Perhaps it’s not had enough to eat, like that kitten I found in the ditch.  And perhaps it’ll get fat, like her; and mamma said we wanted an old horse to go in the cart for luggage, and I’m sure that one’s very old.  And that’s such a horrid man, like hump-backed Richard.  And when nobody’s looking, he tugs it, and beats it.  Oh, I wish I could beat him!” and Amabel danced dangerously upon the horsehair seat in her white gaiters with impotent indignation.  The Squire was very weak when press............
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