He gestured behind the screen and I peered around it. Tied to a stake on the ground was a beautiful grey stallion, standing quiet and docile, but his dark eye rolled towards me as he saw me.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said with longing. ‘I could look after him all right.’

Jack gave me a little smile as warm and understanding as his da.

‘Would you like to ride him after the show?’ he invited. ‘Or do you have better things to do, like your sister?’

Dandy’s fingers nipped my arm but for once I ignored her. ‘I’d love to ride him,’ I said hastily. ‘I’d rather ride him than go to any fair, any day.’

He nodded at that. ‘Da said you were horse-mad,’ he said. ‘Wait till after the show and you can go up on him.’

He glanced towards the gate and nodded as his father waved.

‘Take your seats,’ Robert Gower called in his loud announcing voice. ‘Take your seats for the greatest show in England and Europe!’

Jack winked at Dandy and ducked behind the screen as his father shut the gate and came to the centre of the flat grass. Dandy and I scurried to the hill and sat down in expectant silence.

I sat through the show in a daze. I had never seen horses with such training. They had four small ponies – Welsh mountain or New Forest, I thought – who started the show with a dancing act. There was a barrel organ playing and the boy Jack Gower stood in the middle of the ring with a fine purple coat over his red shirt and a long whip. As he cracked it and moved from the centre to the side the little ponies wheeled and trotted individually, turning on their hind legs, reversing the order, all with their heads up and the plumes on their heads jogging and their bells ringing ringing ringing like out-of-season sleighbells.

People cheered as he finished with a flourish with all four ponies bending down in a horse curtsey, and he swept off his purple tricorne hat and bowed to the crowd. But he exchanged a look with Dandy as if to say that it was all for her, and I felt her swell with pride.

The stallion was next in the ring, with a mane like white sea foam tumbling down over his arched neck. Robert Gower came in with him and made him rear and stamp his hooves to order. He picked out flags of any colour – you could call out a colour and he would bring you the one you ordered. He danced on the spot and he could count up numbers up to ten by pawing the ground. He could add up, too, quicker than I could. He was a brilliant horse and so beautiful!