"Thinking it was a gun out of a Zeppelin," she said pallidly. "Will you pick the whip up, Mr. Keefe, like a love, now?"
"Sorry, a Master," bustled Keefe; "this way, Mrs. Weston. Keep the track." He did it again on the high note.
"You'll certainly break something if you try so high," said Violet. "And you're distracting Mr. Dillon, so do stop."
Hounds were on now. They towled away, Home Ruler leading over the springy tussocks, every hound hunting, every tongue thrown.
The General's man sobered the young horse by pulling him straight at the spongiest piece of ground, through which they laboured and heaved, and the bay was in hand as they jumped an ugly bog drain and landed on sound grass.
The pace was fair, hounds running steadily over light springy land, fenced by small narrow-topped banks.
"It's hunting, after all." Brownlow's hatchety severe face relaxed to a look of positive surprise as he took his horse by the head and pulled out to the right of hounds. How many years ago since he had ridden there before, just before his wedding, with the bright girl whom he had met in England and come over to marry—seeing her send along a half-broken chestnut filly as if she were the possessor of three necks?
Gheena swung past him now, the same glow of delight on her young face, her eyes as ecstatically happy; but her mount was a hunter, trained and fit to go.
"Look out there! A drop!"
Gheena put the roan at a brake of brambles overgrowing a slimy spot with a heavy drop outside on to a rutty cart-track. It took a clever horse to balance on the mixture of crumbling earth and shale and slide down without a mistake.