It was a docile, friendly creature, christened by its donor "Pegasus," in order not to lay too much emphasis on its sex (the Major was rather nice in such matters). And it soon learned to nuzzle Joan for sugar and follow her about the yard like a big dog, looking quite injured and surprised that she did not take it into the house with her. In her delight and gratitude, Joan almost forgot to wonder whether the horse-raising cousin had been paid for Pegasus, and by whom.
The possession of a horse automatically increased her acquaintance with human nature, introducing her to an element of Louisville society hitherto unknown to her except at a distance—the negro. Mrs. Darcy employed, with the exception of a chauffeur and a yard-boy, what she designated as "white help." She, like Ellen Neal, had an inherent distrust of a black skin. But wherever there is a good horse may also be found, drawn by an irresistible affinity, all the male negroes of the vicinity.
Joan, advised and assisted by the chauffeur, the yard-boy, and innumerable colored acquaintances from the alley, soon learned more about horses and horsemanship than could have been taught her in all the riding-schools in the world. Pegasus was brought up literally by hand. The yard-boy proved himself particularly adept, though how he came by so much knowledge of horse-flesh in his eighteen ragged years of cutting grass and whitening front steps and washing windows, was a puzzle to Joan. She asked him once.
"Huccom I knows how to do wif hawses?" he repeated, scratching his head. "Laws, Miss Joan, I dunno! Huccum I knows how to chaw terbacca, or to w'istle thoo my teef? Reck'n I was jes' natchelly bo'n dat-away."
She wondered what, with the gradual disappearance of the horse, would become of his friend the negro. Perhaps both, like the Indian, were doomed soon to become a legend in the land....
Richard Darcy formed quite a habit of dropping in at the stable himself to give Joan the benefit of his advice and inexperience; and his attitude toward their colored visitors was a source of never-failing interest to her. He treated them with an off-hand casualness quite impossible to his daughter, to whom they were a race apart, to be pitied and dealt with gently. The Major dealt with them anything but gently. He bullied them, swore at them, ordered them around as if they were still goods and chattels, and apparently they loved him for it. One and all they sprang to his least suggestion, from the humblest alley-rat of the neighborhood to the haughtiest chauffeur—and there is nothing haughtier in the world than a colored man in livery. At the same time, they felt quite free to confide in him the most intimate details of their private lives; and they asked without reserve for anything of his that took their fancy. His cigars, his small change, the very clothes on his back, were not sacred from their requisition.
"Please, Major, gimme two-bits?" one of them would suggest tentatively.
"What do you want two-bits for, you infernal beggar?"
"To buy me a drink with, please, suh. My th'oat's dusty."
"A damn good reason for a damn impudent request," Richard Darcy would grumble, his hand going into his pocket.