He answered her, still with his eyes on the vanishing figure of the girl in the Quorn-cloth habit. “You ride like an Arab,” he said. “She rides like—like—like an Englishwoman.”
“You don’t think I ride as well,” said Virginia, in an indescribable voice, turning away. She was filled with an unreasoning, unchristian, wholly uncivilized desire to mount Bonnibel, overtake, and spatter Miss Mary Erroll with as much mud as possible. Suddenly she turned and came back to Roden. “I—I—I s’pose you think a gyrl oughtn’ to ride straddle?” she said, with an unusual hint of timidity in her rich tones.
“Oh, I don’t know that there’s any harm in it,” he said, carelessly. Again she stood away from him. A feeling of utterly unreasonable anger and rebellion was swelling in her heart and straining her throat. Was it against Miss Mary Erroll or against Roden? She could not herself have told. One fact was entirely apparent to her: he did not deem what she did or did not do things worthy his consideration.
“I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel!” she said, passionately, between her locked teeth, as she went blindly on through the furze and briers. “I bet she couldn’t ride Bonnibel—straddle or no straddle!”
It was not until three days later that she found out from her father the fact of Roden’s having been to call (nominally) upon the lamb of Miss Mary Erroll.
“The beauty of the question air,” ended that modern Solomon, as he filled his white clay pipe—“The beauty of the question air, that thar gyrl cert’n’y is goin’ to lead that young fellar a darnce. They say she’s got it down ter a fine p’int.”
“What?” said Virginia, curtly.
“Why, coquettin’—hyah! hyah! That’s the darnce she’ll lead him. ’N’ they sez, moresomever, as how th’ English fellars takes to her like the partridges ter th’ woods—plague ’em!—’count o’ her w’arin’ boots like a man, an’ skirts at harf-marst when she goes out on hawseback. Lawd! I cert’n’y do ’spise ter see a woman hitched onter th’ side uv er hawse like a pecker-wood a-stickin’ ter rer tree-trunk!”
Virginia came and leaned on the back of his chair, picking some bits of straw from his many-hued waistcoat. “You don’t think it’s any harm for a girl to ride straddle, do you, father?” she said, slowly.