"What, at Cannanore?"
"No; there we had bullocks; but I rode a great deal before I came out. I spent all my holidays, since I was about two years old, on a farm with my father's old nurse. Her family bred, and broke, hunters, they had quite a reputation."
"And so you learnt to ride, before you cut your second teeth?"
"Yes, I think so," and as she smiled she displayed two dazzling rows of these.
"And what else did you learn?"
"To milk and make butter, and rear fowl, and all sorts of unusual accomplishments."
"What sort, for instance?"
"Well, to drive a mowing machine," and she laughed gaily. "Shall we take another turn, before the music stops?"
As they launched into the vortex, Mallender felt sincerely sorry to think that this remarkably pretty bright girl, with all her inborn country tastes, was about to be delivered over to Colonel Harris, her father's contemporary!
"Won't you have some refreshment?" he suggested as they moved towards the buffet, "iced coffee, lemonade, champagne?"