"Not at all, Mr. Harcourt. I am heavier and stronger than you probably, and so braced that I had a great advantage. You had no purchase on them, and were chilled by long driving."
"Where did you learn to manage horses?" asked Lottie.
"On our Western farm. We had plenty of them. A horse is almost human: you must be very firm and very kind."
"Is that the way to treat the 'human'?" said Lottie, her bold and somewhat reckless spirit having so far recovered itself as to enable her to laugh.
"Yes, for a man, if he attempts to manage at all; but I suppose the majority of us are managed, if we would only acknowledge it. What chance has a man with a coaxing, clever woman?"
"Look there," said Harcourt, as they were turning the first sharp angle in the road to which he had referred. "Where should we have been if we had gone round this point at our speed when I held the reins?"
The steep embankment, with grim rocks protruding from the snow and with gnarled trunks of trees, was anything but inviting.
"Come, De Forrest," continued Harcourt, "brush up your mathematics. At what angle, and with what degree of force, should we have swooped down there on a tangent, when the horses rounded this curve?"
"O-o-h!" exclaimed Lottie, looking shudderingly down the steep bank, at the bottom of which brawled a swift stream among ice-capped rocks. "It's just the place for a tragedy. We were talking about heaven and the other place when the horses started, were we not? Perhaps we were nearer one or the other of them than we supposed."
"O, hush, Lottie!" cried Bel, still sobbing and trembling; "I wish we had remained at home."