"What's the time?" asked the girl.
Silver referred to his wrist-watch.
"It's nearly half-past eleven."
"We must trot," said Boy.
They trotted away, the brown horse and the gray side by side, the regular clap-clap of their feet sometimes overlapping and sometimes beating in unison, only to break eventually again, to the disappointment of the girl's attentive ear. It was the fashion amid the hunting folk to despise hacking along the road as so much waste of time. To the girl the steady tramp along the hard road was like the march of life. She would hack from covert to covert, one of a great cavalcade, men and women, with bobbing heads, their faces set all in the same direction, the sound of the horses' feet splashing all round her like a stream. She would flow along in the centre of that stream, unconscious of those about her, silent when addressed, absorbed in the only music for which she cared.
The noise of Banjo blowing his nose now brought her back to earth. She peeped at the face of the man on the big gray at her side.
"Had a bad time?" she asked warily.
He turned to her, his face lit with the smile that took all the heaviness out of it.
"Worrying," he said.
"Well, you're through now," said the girl.