The shadows were beginning to grow long and thin when we started, though the sun was still bright, so I carried a sunshade, and went hatless, American fashion.
To avoid going out in the road we took field paths and skirted along the edge of meadows where grain was tall and golden, or white as a summer snowstorm. There were no proper stiles, as with us, so whenever we came to one of the rough fences which divided one field from another I had to mount on the first or second bar, and let Mr. Brett lift me over.
He is so strong that he did it as if I were a bundle of down instead of a tall girl, and I had much the same exhilarating sensation I used to have as a wee thing when I rode wildly on Mohunsleigh's foot. I was glad when we came to the fences, and that there were a good many of them. But I wasn't at all glad when Mr. Brett jumped me over into a grass meadow where there was a whole drove of ferocious-looking black and white cattle.
"Couldn't we go some other way round?" I asked, longing to get behind him, but ashamed for him to see what an idiot I am about cows, and perhaps make him lose his good opinion of me as a reasonably brave girl.
"I'm afraid not, unless we turn back," said he. "But you needn't mind them. Remember, you're with an old 'cow puncher.'"
"Oh, were you one, too?" I asked trying to seem at ease.
"Too?"
"I was thinking of a friend of my cousin Mohunsleigh's whom he was always talking about, a Mr. Harborough, who lives in San Francisco. Mohunsleigh knew him abroad somewhere. He used to be a 'cow puncher,'--whatever that is--in Texas, I believe, though now he's a millionaire. Did you ever hear of him?"
"Yes," said Mr. Brett, in rather a dry way.
"I was so disappointed not to meet him."