"Then I will see Mrs. Raby across the cut, and join you there."
"But I can manage quite well by myself," protested Belle.
"I have no interest in villages, Mrs. Raby; and,--excuse me--before we start your pony's girths require tightening." He slipped from his horse and was at her side before she could reply.
"Then I'm off," cried John with a faint shrug of his shoulders. "I'll meet you at the corner, Marsden, in twenty minutes."
"Steady, lad, steady!" murmured the Major with his head under the flap of the saddle, as Suleimân figeted to join his stable-companion. Belle standing, tapping her boot with her whip, moved forward. "Give me the reins. I don't see why you should do everything."
Philip came up from the girths smiling, and began on the curb.
"What a fidget you are! I'm glad John isn't like that."
"Curbs and girths mean more than you suppose. There! now you can go neck-and-crop at everything, and I won't say you nay. Steady, lad, steady! One, two, three--are you all right?"
"Thank you, I think I have the proper number of hands and feet, and so far as I know my head is on my shoulders," replied Belle tartly.
They dipped down a bit from the fields to a sluggish stream edging the higher land, and then scampered across the muddy flats towards the promontory which lay right at the other side of the bend.