“I say, Jim,” cried Frobisher, “let her go a little free at them; she 's always too hot when you hold her back.”
“You don't know, perhaps, that Jim is the lady,” whispered Linton, and withdrawing for secrecy behind the cover of the hedge. “Jim,” continued Linton, “is the familiar for Jemima. She's Meek's daughter, and the wildest romp—”
“By Jove! how well she cleared it. Here she comes back again,” cried Cashel, in all the excitement of a favorite sport.
“That 's all very pretty, Jim,” called out Frobisher, “but let me observe it's a very Brummagem style of thing, after all. I want you to ride up to your fence with your mare in hand, touch her lightly on the flank, and pop her over quietly.”
“She is too fiery for all that,” said the girl, as she held in the mettlesome animal, and endeavored to calm her by patting her neck.
“How gracefully she sits her saddle,” muttered Cashel; and the praise might have been forgiven from even a less ardent admirer of equestrianism, for she was a young, fresh-looking girl, with large hazel eyes, and a profusion of bright auburn hair which floated and flaunted in every graceful wave around her neck and shoulders. She possessed, besides, that inestimable advantage as a rider which perfect fearlessness supplies, and seemed to be inspired with every eager impulse of the bounding animal beneath her.
As Cashel continued to look, she had taken the mare a canter round a large grass field, and was evidently endeavoring, by a light hand and a soothing, caressing voice, to calm down her temper; stooping, as she went, in the saddle to pat the animal's shoulder, and almost bending her own auburn curls to the counter.
“She is perfect!” cried Roland, in a very ecstasy. “See that, Linton! Mark how she sways herself in her saddle!”
“That comes of wearing no stays,” said Linton, dryly, as he proceeded to light a cigar.
“Now she's at it. Here she comes!” cried Cashel almost breathless with anxiety; for the mare, chafed by the delay, no sooner was turned towards the fence once more, than she stretched out and dashed wildly at it.