Carin, you are horrified, aren’t you? Darlin’, it just slipped out. But it was the truth.
“Do you mean—” he cried, putting his horse up beside Sally McLean. But I told you Sally was in a mood. She didn’t like that way of doing things. Perhaps she thought he meant to brush me off of her, or maybe she imagined that it was a race. I can’t say, because Sally and I do not understand each other very well yet. But at any rate, she was off down the road, mud or no mud, and I did not even try to hold her in.
I could hear Keefe thundering along behind me, crying:
“Can’t you hold her? Throw yourself off.”
But not I. I let her go as fast as she wished. At least, until I got near home and on the macadam, and then I gently drew her in. I didn’t know but she might be beyond all reason by that time, but she wasn’t, and I felt terribly ashamed of having let uncle’s fine mare get in such a fume.
“I do hope and pray, Sally,” I said, “that I haven’t ruined your disposition with my wretched temper.”
Just then it came over me that there was nothing at all the matter with Sally’s disposition. The trouble was all with me. I had been in a trembling rage all day and the sensitive creature had taken it from me. I was disgusted with myself.
“Little Sally,” I whispered in her ear as I dropped off her at the house door, “I’ll never, never act like that again.”
She has wonderful eyes. I wish I had eyes like that creature. She looked at me straight and we kissed and made up. That is to say, I made the boy hold her till I got her some sugar, and I told him to rub her down well and blanket her and feed her very lightly.
“She got a little excited,” I said. It was young James, and he looked at me curiously. I wondered if he, too, saw that I was the excited one.