"I don't want to spend the Easter holidays grooming a beastly muddy pony."

When Christabel's father says "All right" to this, she doesn't expect that anything will happen. But it does. He sells her ponies. Christabel gets over it pretty quickly, but then she goes to stay with the Westlakes while her parents are away. It's never fun when you realise that people don't think very much of you, and the worst of it is, Christabel begins to agree with them. And she comes to bitterly regret selling her ponies. But will she ever be able to find them again? In a pre-internet age, it's not easy.