"O it's very possible, I assure you!" said Robert. "See if it is not. What I want to ask is, why you Virginians so often use the word 'reckon' in the sense of 'think' or 'presume,' as you did a moment since?"
"Because it's right," said Sudie.
"No, cousin, it is not good English," replied Robert.
"Perhaps not, but it's good Virginian, and that's better for my purposes. Besides, it must be good English. St. Paul used it twice."
"Did he? I was not aware that the Apostle to the Gentiles spoke English at all."
"Come, Cousin Robert, I must give out dinner now. Do you want to carry my key-basket?"
CHAPTER VIII.
Miss Sudie makes an Apt Quotation.
My friend who writes novels tells me that there is no other kind of exercise which so perfectly rests an over-tasked brain as riding on horseback does. His theory is that when the mind is overworked it will not quit working at command, but goes on with the labor after the tools have been laid aside. If the worker goes to bed, either he finds it impossible to go to sleep or sleeping he dreams, his mind thus working harder in sleep than if he were awake. Walking, this novelist friend says, affords no relief. On the contrary, one thinks better when walking than at any other time. But on horseback he finds it impossible to confine his thoughts to any subject for two minutes together. He may begin as many trains of thought as he chooses, but he never gets past their beginning. The motion of the animal jolts it all up into a jumble, and rest is the inevitable result. The man's animal spirits rise, in sympathy, perhaps, with those of his horse, and as the animal in him begins to assert itself his intellect yields to its master and suffers itself to become quiescent.