Poor Badger Read Online Free

have something to say to them.’
    Ros shook with tears and fear. But at this moment a girl rode up to the next-door horsebox and dismounted. She didn’t take any notice of the fraught little group round Badger, but Mr Smith had to lower his voice.

    ‘You haven’t heard the last of this, my girl! Now run along, or I’ll fetch a policeman.’
    ‘It’s you that needs a policeman!’ Leo said, very bravely, and going very red in the face. But all the same, he was already retreating as he spoke. ‘Come along, Ros.’
    They crept away along the line of horseboxes. Ros was sobbing with rage and hurt.
    Leo said sadly, ‘Don’t cry, Ros. Badger’ll be all right. He won’t dare hit him again, with people there.’
    ‘Poor darling Badger, belonging to that horrible man! What can we do to help him?’
    ‘Well, we give him carrots.’ Leo decided to filch another box of muesli that very night. His mother kept a good stock. ‘We could steal him away.’
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘We could look for somewhere.’
    ‘Do you think we could?’
    ‘You can do anything if you try hard enough,’ Leo said, quoting a favourite saying of his father’s. He only repeated it; he didn’t think it was true.
    It didn’t sound hopeful, even to Ros, thinking of the railway line and the arterial road, not to mention Safeway’s car park, all hemming Badger in. And besides, stealing was wicked. But not as wicked as Dad Smith.
    The show was ruined for Ros, and she went home on the bus with Leo early. Her mother was surprised, and Ros told her what had happened, but she didn’t tell her about how she had shouted at Mr Smith. She pretended she had only watched.
    When it was quite late she slipped out to see Badger. He was standing dejectedly on his tether, and shifted uneasily when he saw her, as if he didn’t trust anybody any more, even her. She hugged him and gave him her titbits. His water bucket was half-full. Probably Albert had filled it. The saddle marks were still on his back. No one had bothered to rub him down and make him comfortable. He had hardly anything to eat.
    ‘I do wish you were mine, Badger!’
    Now that he had given Fi such a bad time in the show-ring, perhaps he would be sold. But he didn’t look half the pony he had looked a few months ago. Ros remembered the shining, bouncy animal she had first set eyes on, roaming round his chain and whinnying. Now he always stood in a head-down, dejected way. Who would want him now? He looked like a cheap pony now, and would quite likely go to another poor home. Or could anybody be as bad as Mr Smith?
    No, she had reason to decide very soon afterwards. When she went indoors the telephone rang, and she answered it, hoping it was one of her school-friends. But it was Mr Smith. She recognized his coarse, angry voice straight away.
    ‘I want to speak to your father!’ he said.
    Ros put the receiver back and cut him off. But it rang again shortly and her father came out and picked the receiver up.
    Ros went upstairs to her bedroom and sat on her bed, shivering. The thought of Mr Smith and his cruel expression was unbearable.
    As she knew would happen, her father came up to her bedroom after the phone call and said to her, ‘What’s all this then, about your attacking Mr Smith? Is it true?’
    Ros explained, between her hiccuping tears.
    Her father listened patiently, his face grave.
    ‘It was wrong of you, but I do understand. I think you ought to keep out of his way in future.’
    ‘But I must go and see Badger! He needs me!’
    ‘Look, Ros, you’ve got to accept that you can’t manage the world to suit yourself. You can’t interfere. Badger is not yours. He’s not well-treated, but he’s not actually knocked about. If he’s starving, as you say, he doesn’t look it. Poor, admitted, but not at death’s door. I am very much afraid, in spite of what you think, that the people whose job it is to investigate these things, the police or the RSPCA, would consider you were wasting