Mrs. Woodburn came slowly down the steps of the old manor-house to meet them.
She was a tall woman, gray, rather gaunt, and perhaps twenty years younger than her husband. She wore a plain black dress, and there was about her a wonderful atmosphere of peace and dignity.
Nobody but Mat would have dreamed of calling such a woman Mar, and any other woman of the type but Patience Longstaffe would have resented the name.
"I'm glad you won, dad," she said in a voice deep as her daughter's, but harsher, as though from wear. "And I hope you won fair."
The old man, who had alighted, was passing the reins through the rings of the saddle.
"There she goes!" he croaked in his protesting voice. "Might just as well be on the crook—straight, I might, for all the credit I gets."
Mrs. Woodburn kissed him and the girl, and ran a practised eye and hand down Goosey Gander's fore-legs.
His wife might be a Puritan, but Mat was the first to admit that there was little about a horse he could teach her.
"He got round all right, then, Brand?" she said.
"Oh, yes, 'm," chirruped the little jockey. "It was light goin', so his pipe didn't trouble him; and he fenced like he was in Paridise. I lay off a bit till they was all bust, then I come right away through 'em and spread-eagled the lot."