"You want too much money for her, McCarthy," returned Miss Sally, with her little air of preternatural wisdom.
"God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well that forty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Forty-five pounds!" He laughed. "It'd be as good for me to make her a present to the gentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She's too grand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn't for the long weak family I have, I wouldn't part with her under twice the money."
"Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him," commented Flurry in the background. "That's the long weak family!"
Bernard dismounted and slapped the mare's ribs approvingly.
"I haven't had such a gallop since I was at Rio," he said. "What do you think of her, Miss Knox?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "I like her. I think I may as well give him the forty-five and have done with it!"
At these ingenuous words I saw a spasm of anguish cross the countenance of McCarthy, easily interpreted as the first pang of a life-long regret that he had not asked twice the money. Flurry Knox put up an eyebrow and winked at me; Mr. Shute's groom turned away for very shame. Sally Knox laughed with the deplorable levity of nineteen.
Thus, with a brevity absolutely scandalous in the eyes of all beholders, the bargain was concluded.
Flurry strolled up to Philippa, observing an elaborate remoteness from Miss Sally and Mr. Shute.
"I believe I'm selling a horse here myself to-day," he said; "would you like to have a look at him, Mrs. Yeates?"
"Oh, are you selling, Knox?" struck in Bernard, to whose brain the glory of buying a horse had obviously mounted like new wine; "I want another, and I know yours are the right sort."