CHAPTER XX
The Paddock Close
The girl's voice broke in on them.
"I'm going home now," she cried abruptly.
"Right," answered Silver. "May I come along?"
As he swung round, he saw the girl already jogging away. He pursued leisurely, anxious to talk about Make-Way-There, the Paris Meeting, and Chukkers and Monkey Brand's gossip. But she flitted away in front of him. As he drew up to her she broke into a canter, and the young man took a pull.
His intuitions, like those of most slow-brained men, were unusually swift and sure. It was as though Nature, the Dispenser of Justice, to compensate him for an apparent dearth in one direction, had endowed him richly in another.
"Woa, my little lad, woa then!" he murmured as Heart of Oak bounced and fretted to catch the retreating roan.
He realised that the girl had withdrawn within herself again. On the cliff, in the excitement of action, she had forgotten herself for the moment. Now she was cold and shy once more, retreating behind her barriers, closing her visor. It was as though she had admitted him too close; and to recover herself must now swing to the other extreme.
Obedient to her will, he kept several lengths behind her. When she found he did not draw up alongside, she slackened her pace. He felt her resistance was dying down in answer to his non-resistance. She was shoving against emptiness, and getting no good from it.
As they came to the crest of the Downs and began the descent of the hill, Boy dropped into a walk.