She put her nose up to him in a friendly, trustful way, while he rubbed it gently.
“We shall make a cure of her, John,” he said.
“Yes, sir, she’s wonderfully improved; she’s not the same creature that she was; it’s ‘the Birtwick balls,’ sir,” said John, laughing.
This was a little joke of John’s; he used to say that a regular course of “the Birtwick horseballs” would cure almost any vicious horse; these balls, he said, were made up of patience and gentleness, firmness and petting, one pound of each to be mixed up with half a pint of common sense, and given to the horse every day.