I pretended to pull a zipper across my mouth. “Don’t worry,” I promised. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“Ooooh!” the crowd suddenly murmured. I turned to see what the commotion was about and was startled to see Nicky’s head towering four feet above the clothesline.
“He’s on stilts,” Dawn cried. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
“Neither did I,” I said in amazement. My brother, sporting a red, white, and blue top hat and a white goatee beard, grinned at the audience as my sister announced, “And now, let’s hear it for Nicholas Pike as Uncle Sam.”
“Yankee Doodle Dandy” blasted out of the tape recorder as Nicky strutted back and forth in front of the curtains on his stilts. He was wearing a long pair of pants that completely covered the wooden stilts, so he truly seemed to be an eight-foot-tall person.
“Hasn’t Nicky been practicing at home?” Dawn asked me.
I shrugged. “He might have been, but I was kind of preoccupied with my riding lessons and the horse show and everything.”
My lessons really had taken up a big chunk of my time. I’d neglected my friendship with the members of the Baby-sitters Club, especially Jessi, and with my own brothers and sisters. But that was over now and I was relieved. Jessi was my best friend again and horses were just a small part of my life again. Kind of like Nina and her Blankie. She no longer needed to carry the big cumbersome blanket around with her. A small piece of it was just fine. And loving horses from a distance was fine enough for me.
Finally all of the Stars of Tomorrow performers took their curtain calls. As Vanessa, Margo, Claire, and Nicky stepped forward to take their bows, everyone cheered.
But nobody cheered louder than me.
* * *
Dear Reader,
Mallory Pike loves horses, and when I was younger, so did I. I took riding lessons at a stable outside of Princeton, New Jersey, called Hasty Acres. My favorite horse was named Mr. Chips. He was very gentle, and I tried to ride Mr. Chips at every lesson. My least favorite horse was Sky High, who was as big as he sounds, and rambunctious, too. All year we prepared to appear in a show in the spring. And all year I tried to ride Mr. Chips at every lesson. However, when we were assigned horses to ride in the show, I was assigned Sky High. I was terrified! But I rode him anyway, and I won third place. Although I didn’t continue my riding lessons, I did continue to love horses. And every now and then, I still go out for a ride — most recently, while on vacation in Santa Fe.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Jahnna Beecham
and
Malcolm Hillgartner
for their help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1992 by Ann M. Martin.
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, May 1992
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-69047-8
Mallory and the Dream Horse Page 10