“Why didn’t you say so before?” asked Miss Fitzroy, bending her straight brows in righteous severity.
“Well, that’s true indeed, your ladyship; but, after all—I declare a man couldn’t hardly live without he’d tell a lie sometimes!”
Fanny Fitz stooped, rather hurriedly, and entered upon a renewed examination of the filly’s legs. Even Rupert Gunning, after his brief and unsympathetic survey, had said she had good legs; in fact, he had only been able to crab her for the length of her back, and he, as Fanny Fitz reflected with a heat that took no heed of metaphor, was the greatest crabber that ever croaked.
“What are you asking for her?” she demanded with a sudden access of decision.
There was a pause. The owner of the filly and his friend withdrew a step or two and conferred together in Irish at lightning speed. The filly held up her head and regarded her surroundings with guileless wonderment. Fanny Fitz made a mental dive into her bankbook, and arrived at the varied conclusions that she was £30 to the good, that on that sum she had to weather out the summer and autumn, besides pacifying various cormorants (thus she designated her long-suffering tradespeople), and that every one had told her that if she only kept her eyes open in Connemara she might be able to buy something cheap and make a pot of money on it.
“This poor honest man,” said the friend, returning to the charge, “says he couldn’t part her without he’d get twenty-eight pounds for her; and, thank God, it’s little your ladyship would think of giving that!”
Fanny Fitz’s face fell.
“Twenty-eight pounds!” she echoed. “Oh, that’s ridiculous!”
The friend turned to the owner, and, with a majestic wave of the hand, signalled to him to retire. The owner, without a change of expression, coiled up the rope halter and started slowly and implacably for the gate; the friend took off his hat with wounded dignity. Every gesture implied that the whole transaction was buried in an irrevocable past.
Fanny Fitz’s eyes followed the party as they silently left the yard, the filly stalking dutifully with a long and springy step beside her master. It was a moment full of bitterness, and of a quite irrational indignation against Rupert Gunning.