“It was savage!” I said, realizing for the first time how badly I had been used; “but the animals were just as cruel, the stag and Jupiter; I would not have believed it of Jupiter, he used to love me; and the very first trouble, off he goes with the rest!”
Tears came into my eyes again at this thought, but I quenched and crushed them between my eyelashes, too proud for an exposure of my keen distress at the desertion of Jupiter.
“Nay,” said the youth, smiling, “but I have come back to see after you.”
“Did you?” I replied, with a gush of gratitude; “to see after me, and for nothing else?”
“What else should bring me back?” he replied, looking around as if in search of something. “So the stag has gone too, ungrateful beast. I had a fancy to fasten some badge on his horns that he might be safe hereafter. He was a noble old fellow after all, no wonder he was glad to get away from this spot!”
“But Jupiter,” I said, with growing confidence in the youth, “what can have become of my pony? How am I to get home? Oh, if I only had been good—if I had but stayed in-doors as they told me!”
“As who told you, lady bird?”
“Mr. Turner. He knew that I had no business abroad when the country was full of strangers!”
“And is Turner a relative? What control can he possess over you?”
“He,” I replied, kindling with wonder that any one should doubt Turner’s right to control me. “Mr. Turner, I belong to him! No one else owns me. Scarcely any one else cares for me. Why, in the wide, wide world, he is the only person who ever shall control me—dear, blessed Mr. Turner!”