Boxer was an enormous beast， nearly eighteen hands high， and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together. A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance，and in fact he was not of first-rate intelligence，but he was universally respected for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work. After the horses came Muriel，The white goat，and Benjamin，the donkey.
Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm，and the worst tempered. He seldom talked and when he did it was usually to make some cynical remark—for instance，he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off，but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If asked why，he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Nevertheless，Without openly admitting it，he was devoted to Boxer；the two of them usually spend their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard，grazing side by side and never speaking.
The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings，which had lost their mother，filed into the barn，cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side to find some place where they would not be trodden on. Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great foreleg，and the ducklings nestled down inside it and promptly fell asleep. At the last moment Mollie，the foolish，pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones’s trap，came mincing daintly in， chewing at a lump of sugar.
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