The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Out in the field that afternoon, I couldn’t make Butter go faster than a walk. I
tried and tried. I kicked and squeezed with my legs. I even snapped a branch
off a tree and smacked Butter’s side with it. He lurched forward for a few
stumbling steps, but dropped back almost immediately to his usual shuffle. It
wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t elegant like Jonathan’s horse, but I was sure he
could do better if he tried.
Miss Smith opened the back door. “Ada,” she called, “come here, please.”
Right. I pretended I hadn’t heard, and turned Butter so our backsides faced
her.
“Ada,” she called again, “you’ve got a visitor.”
Maggie? Grimes? Mam? I slid off Butter, pulled the bridle off his head—I
wasn’t going to get chewed out for leaving it on him again—hobbled to my
crutches leaning against the wall, and went into the house as quickly as I
could.
The visitor was Lady Thorton. She was smiling. Her face looked different
when she smiled.
“She’s come to thank you,” Miss Smith said, in an oddly stiff voice.
I stood in the doorway, staring at them, hiding my right foot behind my
left. To break the silence I said, “How is she? Maggie, I mean.”
Lady Thorton—Maggie’s mum—patted the empty spot on the sofa beside
her. I sat down on it, folded my hands, and slid my right foot behind my left.
“She’s much better today, thank you,” Lady Thorton said. “She woke with
a headache, but she knows where and who she is.”
“She seemed all right when she first came off,” I said. “She got worse as
we went on.”
Lady Thorton nodded. “Head injuries can be like that. She tells me she
doesn’t remember much of what happened. She remembers you were there,
but that’s about all. Grimes in the stable told me how you brought her home.”
I glanced at Miss Smith. Her face still looked stiff, like it was made from
cardboard. I said, nodding toward her, “She didn’t believe me, that I rode that
horse an’ all.”
Lady Thorton opened a box near her feet. “I might not have believed it
myself without a witness. That’s not an easy horse.”
“He likes me.” It slipped out before I thought, but I realized it was true.
Jonathan’s horse did like me.