Labotte tightened his hold.
“From the firs’ dime I ’af see you, you ’af been my naize leedle ’orse. Bud olways before, you ’af been shy from me. ‘Ah,’ I ’af say, ‘bud thad is a good fault.’ You know, a man like much bedder when a girl is not oll over ’im at once. An’ so I say, ‘Gently, my frien’, tread gently your naize leedle ’orse: an’ one day she shall whinney when she shall ’ear your face——”
“And eat out of your hand?”
It is doubtful whether the sage heard what she said.
Intoxicated with the triumph of his compelling personality, dazzled by the richness of the pasture his brilliancy had won, considerably affected by the elegance with which his imagery had betrayed at once the sportsman, master and swain, Labotte was out of earshot.
He whirled her past Nicholas in an eloquent dithyramb of motion to which she deliberately subscribed.
“My naize leedle ’orse,” he crooned, “oll while I ’af make spord with the mules I ’af see olways my leedle ’orse in the dail of my eye. An’ ad night I ’af dream about ’er, an’ now. . . ’Af I not say that we shall go well this evening? Eh? An’ do we not? Eh? Was I nod righd then, sweet-bit?”
Craning his neck, he leered into her eyes.
As they swung round, Susan was able to see that the doorway was empty. Kilmuir had gone.
“Now then I will teach you ’ow. You mus’ turn your ’ead sweet-bit, and our leaps shall brush themselves. It will, of gourse, be an agsiden’. I shall not ’af know that you were to move. An’ no one shall know neither . . . But we shall know an’ be ’appy—my leedle——”