“I am still in the dark,” said Mr. Carteret, “but you speak as if they had given you some trouble.”
“My dear fellow,” said the Major, “it has turned out precisely as I said it would.”
“But it can’t be anything very serious,” said Mr. Carteret.
“Oh, no—it is nothing serious,” said Lady Withers, “to have two grooms in the hospital with fractured limbs, and to have no insurance upon them, to have Cecil bitten in the shoulder, to have my breaking harness torn to pieces and Tripp giving me notice. No one would consider that serious.”
“There must be some mistake about this,” said Mr. Carteret blankly. “As I told you, these horses were apt to buck playfully, but, if properly handled, would cause no trouble.”
“It may be playfulness,” said Lady Withers; “I saw one of them buck the saddle over his forelegs and head.”
“That is a fact,” said the Major. “I had read of such a thing, but had never believed it possible.”
“It is possible,” said Mr. Carteret, “but not with our horses.”
“My dear sir,” said the Major, “as I was saying to Lady Withers, your horses may be very good horses in their own place in America, but they are not at all according to English ideas.”
“At the same time,” observed Mr. Carteret with some heat, “I noticed that you are riding one of them.”