01/06/2026
One reason for buying a pony is because you don't want to be beaten by it ... and that's why Jill buys Rapide. As a child who didn't have a pony, nor any chance of getting one, it did seem a bit odd to me when I first read the book that Jill was so negative. She already had one pony, and was getting TWO! And here she was making an epic fuss.
But I do think it's realistic. We often don't realise just how lucky we are compared to other people, and one of the things I love most about Jill is that she is real. She's very far from perfect.
Here's the bit where she tells Ann, and later Martin, what she's done.
****
Next morning as soon as I got into the form room my friend Ann Derry rushed up to me.
“Did you buy it?” she cried excitedly. “The pony, I mean.”
“Yes I did,” I said, putting down my case and remembering that I had left my history notebook on the top of the corn-bin in the outhouse.
“What’s he like? Do tell me!”
“He’s all right,” I said. It was just as if something was clamping me down when I tried to talk about Rapide. I couldn’t tell about Saturday, even to my school friend.
“Well, if you don’t want to tell me you needn’t,” said Ann rather huffily.
“I’ve told you,” I said. “He’s all right. He’s quite a good pony and he can jump. There isn’t anything else to say, is there?”
She just stared at me, because of course I am usually a person who has a great deal to say about everything. I thought gloomily that ever since Rapide had come into my life all my nearest and dearest had begun to think I was bats. Perhaps I would be bats before I had finished with Rapide.
By break-time it was all over the form that I had bought a show jumper. Everybody was interested because most of them rode, and I had been meeting them in the show ring for the last two summers.
“So you’ve bought a new pony, for jumping?” said Susan Pyke as we ate our biscuits. “I shall have to pull my socks up!”
I could have pointed out that I had beaten her in most events only that very summer but I felt too low to bother.
“What’s he like? What’s he called?” everybody was shouting at me. I’m sure they thought I had some sinister reason for being dumb about Rapide because it would never occur to them that anybody could be so mad as to buy a pony she didn’t like.
I felt miserable by the time I went home that afternoon, and after tea I couldn’t bear it any longer so I went over to see Martin Lowe who is the grandest person and taught me to ride, though he has to sit in a wheel-chair all the time because he lost the use of his legs when he was in the R.A.F. in the war.
I always liked going to the Lowes’. I liked their house which was big and old-fashioned and countryfied and I liked all the whips and photographs of horses and the trophies which were hung up on the walls, and the piles of Horse and Hound in places where most houses have dreary magazines about knitting and fashions, and the wonderful stables at the back, and the way their groom hissed—all grooms hiss but the Lowes’ groom was the world’s champion hisser—and the huge paddock, and the sort of meals the Lowes had, and their cook who could make peppermint creams, and the general horsiness of everything. The only thing I didn’t like was the way Mrs. Lowe always treated me as if I were six, only Martin said she did that to him too.
Martin was writing in the dining-room with the window open as I rode up on Black Boy, and he shouted, “Come in! You haven’t been to see us for ages. I expect you’re dying to tell me about the new pony. You did buy him, I suppose?”
I dismounted in a nonchalant sort of way—at least I hope it looked like that—and tethered my pony. Then I went into the house.
“How’s things?” said Martin.
“All right,” I said.
“Now what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said.
He picked up his pen and just went on writing, as much as to say, “If that’s all you’re going to tell me, why did you come?”
I knew I was being silly and rude, so in a minute out it all came.
“Oh Martin,” I said, “he’s awful. And he loathes me with a deadly loathing.”
(I got that bit out of an old-fashioned novel. I do think that people in the olden days used to say things in a much more exciting way than we do now.)
Martin put his pen down and asked calmly, “What on earth did you buy him for?”
I poured out the story of the dismal visit to the Penberthys’, and not wanting to disappoint Mummy who liked Mrs. Penberthy so much, and about Rapide having turned against me from the very start and how he jumped a clear round for Joan Penberthy and wouldn’t do a thing for me.
“So I bought him,” I said, “just to show him that I wouldn’t be beaten.”
“Well, that’s one reason for buying a pony,” said Martin.
“I know it’s batty,” I said. “Oh, do please understand.”
“But it isn’t at all batty,” he said. “Friends of mine have done it before and it has all turned out extremely well. It’s a perfectly good reason for buying a horse and shows you have the right spirit. Good luck to you.”
“Oh Martin, I’m so relieved I could pass out!” I said. “Promise me you’ll never let Mummy know how I feel about Rapide. She thinks he’s wonderful.”
“I shan’t let a single hair of the cat out of the bag,” he said. “You say this pony is actually a good pony and can jump?”
“Oh yes, he’s been well schooled. I saw him do six jumps that were the kind you get in the under-sixteens. He’s won masses of prizes for Joan Penberthy. But he’s got the weirdest action. He canters up to the jump, then checks and stops dead. Then he pops up his forelegs, sort of bucks up his middle, pops up his hind-legs and he’s over. I can’t think how he does it. I did so hope I’d get a soaring kind of jumper.”
“You don’t think he’s a mean-spirited pony?”
“No-oo,” I said slowly. “It was just the way he looked at me, as much as to say, who is this lower-than-worms creature? And I felt such a fool when he wouldn’t try to jump for me. Mummy thought I was letting her down and the Penberthys thought I’d never tried to jump before. That was when I decided to buy Rapide. Rapide! Isn’t it a silly name? He looks more like the Rocking-Horse Fly.”
“Well, I shall look on with interest to see what you make of him,” said Martin. “After all, you can always sell him again.”
This thought, which hadn’t occurred to me, cheered me up so much that I felt quite happy, and we went out to look at the horses and ate some peppermint creams in the kitchen.
*****
If you want to remind yourself of the rest of the story, it's available as an eBook and a paperback, and you can also save yourself some money if you buy the whole series at once. Here are the links for you:
eBook set (£29.99): https://shop.janebadgerbooks.co.uk/products/ruby-ferguson-the-jill-series
paperback set (not illustrated, £70.00): https://shop.janebadgerbooks.co.uk/products/ruby-ferguson-all-nine-jill-books-paperback
eBook (£3.95): https://shop.janebadgerbooks.co.uk/products/ruby-ferguson-jill-has-two-ponies
paperback (£8.99): https://shop.janebadgerbooks.co.uk/products/ruby-ferguson-jill-has-two-ponies-paperback
