Darby gave it up politely. He pulled up to rub his head and say "Hounds noses," looking straight into the small pale face and the big grey-green eyes half hidden by a tangle of dark brown eyelashes.
"They'll be off on the scent of Cupid in a minnit," he said, "or Endymion. Siren would be a better name for you, Miss Moonbeam."
They scrambled through a hole in the boundary bank, and got out into poor pasture fields to draw more woods on the crest of a hill.
"When you run across to that—" said Psyche, pouting. That was the opposite cliff across the harbour.
"—Do you have to swim?" she asked.
"No, there's a ferry," said Darby gravely. "The fox hails it first. Then it comes back for me and the hounds and the hunt servants, and the others wait on the shore for their turn; that's the way we cross the sea, hunting here."
A small bank reared its barrier across the grass. Darby's horse scrambled over contemptuously, Miss Delorme rushing at it wildly, and recovering by the breastplate when the bustled Redbird bungled.
Home Ruler put his nose down with sudden interest, Beauty following suit. A fox had been about. They spoke to the line in the larch wood, when the whip-like tasselled boughs scratched unwary faces as they rode through. It was a stale line. Darby cheered them, hoping the fox might be lying in some clumps of gorse outside, from which there was even the possibility of a hunt.
Violet Weston's tall bay snorted and whistled as they climbed the steep hill. She was attended by her small red-faced swain, who was endeavouring to conceal from his thoughts that green Chartreuse in the morning will mount to the head.
A nip from his flask to assure himself made him happier; he found that irritability passed to loquacious cheeriness, and it took a second nip to bring a thorough glow of sweet peace.