"He'd sell for sixteen to-morrow if I had my way."
"But you haven't. He's the only excitement I have and I mean to keep him. I shall go out again with the hounds on Saturday."
"If you do, you'll make me miserable, Sally. I shan't be able to do a stroke of work."
"Then you'll be very foolish, Ben," she responded, and when I would have still pressed the point, she ran out of the room with the remark that she must have a hot bath before dinner. "If I don't I'll be too stiff to mount," she called back defiantly as she went up the staircase.
All night I worried over the supremacy of Beauchamp, but on the morrow she was kept in bed by the results of her fall, and before she was up again, George had spirited the horse off somewhere to a farm in the country.
"I'd have turned horse thief before I'd have let her get on him again," he said. "I bought the brute, so I had the best right to dispose of him as I wanted to."
"Well, I hope you'll do better next time," I returned. "Sally has got some absurd idea in her head about rivalling Bonny Marshall, but she never will because she isn't built that way."
"No, she isn't built that way," he agreed, "and I'm glad of it. When I want a boy I'd rather have him in breeches than in skirts. Is she out of bed yet?"
"She was up this morning, and on the point of telephoning to the stables when I left the house."
He laughed softly. "Well, my word goes at the stables," he rejoined, "so you needn't worry. I'll not let any harm come to her."