"I don't want a gentle one. I wanted Beauchamp, and since he has gone I don't think I care to ride any more. Bonny is right, I suppose, I could never keep up with her."
"Just as you like, sweetheart, but for my part, I feel easier, somehow, when you don't go out with the hounds. I'd rather you wouldn't do such rough riding."
"That's because like most men you have an ideal of a 'faire ladye,'" she answered, mockingly. "I'm not sure, however, that the huntress hasn't the best of it. What an empty existence the 'faire ladye' must have led!"
At first I thought her determination was uttered in jest, and would not endure through the night; but as the weeks and the months went by and she still refused to consider the purchase of the various horses George put through their paces before her, I realised that she really meant, as she had said, to give up her brief dream of excelling Bonny. Then, for a few months in the spring and summer, she turned to gardening with passion, and aided by Dr. Theophilus and George, she planted a cart-load of bulbs in our square of ground at the back. When I came up late now, I would find the three of them poring over flower catalogues, with gathered brows and thoughtful, enquiring faces.
"There's nothing like a love of the trowel for making friends," remarked the old man, one May afternoon, when I found them resting from their labours while they drank tea on the porch; "it's a pity you haven't time to take it up, Ben. Now, young George there has developed a most extraordinary talent for gardening that he never knew he possessed until I cultivated it. I shouldn't wonder if it took the place of the horse with him in the end. What do you say, Sally?" he added, turning to where Sally and George were leaning together over the railing, with their eyes on a bed of Oriental poppies. "I was telling Ben that I shouldn't wonder if George's taste for flowers would not finally triumph over his fancy for the horse."
For a minute Sally did not look round, and when at last she turned, her face wore a defiant and reckless expression, as it had done that afternoon when Beauchamp had thrown her.
"I'm not sure, doctor," she answered; "after all flowers are tame sport, aren't they? And George is like me—what he wants is excitement."
"I'm sorry to hear that, my dear, a gentle and quiet pursuit is a source of happiness. You remember what Horace says—"
"Ah, I know, doctor, but did even Horace remember what he said while he was young?"
George was still gazing attentively down on the bed of Oriental poppies at the foot of the steps, and though he had taken no part in the conversation, something in his back, in the rigid look of his shoulders, as though his muscles were drawn and tense, made me say suddenly: