Gheena questioned wildly.
"With Whitebird and the Masther's Matty, Miss, the old mare. Tin year, he called her. The General took them both for remounts."
Gheena was young. She did not care for the youngster. But to sell her horse without her leave!
Attended by Crabbit, who was privately certain that nothing but a rat could create such haste, Gheena stormed through the back door, slamming it so hard that two panes of glass smashed, and Anne observed "Bomb-shells!" from the kitchen and tore to the library. Her stepfather, with an ugly look in his eyes which she had learnt to dread, was reading by an enormous fire.
"Four horses," he said coolly, "at the present time was absurd and unpatriotic." Gheena must remember that she was completely in her mother's hands, and, in fact ... here he saw the girl's eyes and decided that threats might not be wise.
Anyhow, the horse was gone, he said, and he had locked up the white oats.
His stepdaughter went out of the room rather too quietly.
Gheena could not censure her mother, who was nervous, expecting it, waiting for the girl's wrath.
"Dearest George had said the animal was not wanted, and there were some new farm implements which were required—chaff-cutter and oats-crusher; a new reaper for the spring. So he said you would understand, my dear."
Miss Freyne kissed her weeping mother and went into the drawing-room. Here Lancelot begged for attention, relying on her so humbly that she gave it ungrudgingly.