Horses known by name

Dolly pulls Martha Tapp's spring cart six days a week. She was eighteen that spring and has gone nearly white about the face, as grey horses do with age. She stands still to be washed, and leans into the brush until Martha has to lean back into her to stay upright.

Bracken, in the next box, is a young deep-bay gelding with black legs and a narrow white blaze, as though somebody had begun painting him and thought better of it. He does not believe in standing still while there is anything to look at. Both Tapps suspect him of the bitten windfall.

On the canal, Marigold is a big dappled mare, grey as a rain cloud, who walks the towpath at the pace of a horse that has done it hundreds of times. She wears a cream crocheted cap that Ada Brimble made her. Nobody knows if she likes it, but she stands still to have it put on.