Chapter V

Loneliness

Pat's mistress was gone. He realized it from
his continued disappointed watching for her
at the fence; he realized it from the utter absence
out of life of the sweets he had learned to love so
well; and he realized it most of all from the change
which rapidly came over the Mexican hostler.
Though he did not know it, Miguel had been instructed,
and in no mistakable language, to take
good care of him, and, among other things, to
keep him healthily supplied with sweets. But
Miguel was not interested in colts, much less in
anything that meant additional labor for him,
and so Pat was made to suffer. Yet in this, as
in all the other things, lay a wonderful good. He
was made to know that he was not wholly a pampered
thing -- was made to feel the other side of
life, the side of bitterness and disappointment,
the side at times of actual want. And this continued
denial of wants, of needs, occasionally,
hardened him, as his earlier experiences had hardened
him, toughened him for the struggles to
come, brought to him that which is good for all
youth -- realization that life is not a mere span

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v?