The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

he couldn’t really go faster, not without tripping himself. He’s showing sense.
This ought to make a big difference.”
I felt stung. I’d been hurting him, and I didn’t know.
“Some people shouldn’t own ponies,” Mr. Grimes said, as though echoing
my thoughts. Then he looked at me. “I don’t mean you,” he said. “Comin’
from London, and bein’ your age and all, how could you know? But that Miss
Smith, she just threw the pony into the field once she’d sold Miss Becky’s
hunters, and she’s never looked at him again as far as I can tell.”
“She told me ponies could do fine just eating grass.”
“Aye, that’s true, but it’s not the only thing they need. If someone gave you
enough to eat, but didn’t keep you clean or healthy or ever show you any kind
of love, how would you feel?”
I said, “I wouldn’t feel hungry.”
Mr. Grimes laughed. “Well, that’s so.” When he was finished he said, “You
bring him back here in four weeks or so, so I can trim him again. Usually
you’d say every six weeks, but we’ll have a bit of work to do before he’s back
to normal. Ordinarily the village farrier’d do it, but he enlisted last week.”
I nodded. Searched my head for the right words to say. Found them.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Grimes.”
His eyes crinkled, but he didn’t smile. He pulled off his hat, revealing a
nearly bald head, and scratched himself behind one ear. “It’s just Grimes,” he
said. “Mr. Grimes, that would be if I were a butler or something important,
like. But if we’re going to be friends, you can call me Fred.”
“Fred.” I held out my hand, the way the colonel had. Fred shook it.
“And you’re?” he prompted.
“Ada,” I said. “Ada Smith, but just Ada to you.”
Fred took me all around the pony. He cut Butter’s long tangled mane
(“normally we’d pull it, not cut it, but this mess is hopeless”) and showed me
how to start untangling his tail. He taught me how to clean the saddle and
bridle, and how to oil them, over and over with tiny dollops of oil on a rag.
“You keep doing that,” he said. “And any other tack you see at Miss Smith’s,
you oil that too. Leather dries out. It’ll be ruined if it goes neglected much
longer.”
Then he told me he had to get on working. “Too much to do these days,”
he said. “We’ve had to put the hunters back to grass. Too much for one man to
keep ’em legged up and properly strapped and all, and anyways, there’s no