By this time the mare seemed to have concluded that the young woman, who talked ceaselessly in her cooing, contralto voice, was an altogether pleasant acquaintance. Wherever the girl went, around the grounds, the mare followed, nosing her and seemingly soliciting her attention.
At last the girl tolled the mare to a horse block, and for a time stood upon it, gently stroking her silky back.
Then she made a motion as if to sit upon that shapely back. The mare shied away, perhaps remembering former attempts of the kind which she had resented as indignities. But as Evelyn did not insist upon her apparent purpose, and as the mare was by this time very much in sympathy, if not in love, with the gentle girl, she presently sidled back into position, and Evelyn seated herself upon her back, at the same time caressingly stroking the sides of her neck. She had neither saddle on which to sit securely, nor bridle with which to control her mount, but there was no need of either. The mare was nibbling grass by this time, and Evelyn permitted her to do so, letting her wander about the house grounds at will, in search of the most succulent tufts. As the supper hour drew near, the girl slipped from the animal’s back and led the way, the animal following, to the stables. There, with her own hands she filled the manger and the hay-rack, and after an affectionate farewell to her new friend, returned to the house. But first she said to Ben, the hostler:—
“Let nobody feed the mare but me. I will be at the stables in time in the morning. And let nobody touch her with a currycomb. I will myself attend to all.”
Three or four days later the high-spirited mare was Evelyn Byrd’s very humble servant indeed. The girl rode her everywhere, teaching her a number of pretty tricks, the most astonishing of which was the art of lifting a gate latch with her teeth, and letting herself and her rider through the many barriers that Virginian law accommodatingly permitted planters to erect across the public roads.
“But how did you learn all this?” asked Kilgariff, full of interest.
“Oh, I do not know. I reckon I never learned it at all. You see, the animals fight us only because they think we mean to fight them. So long as they are afraid of us, they fight, of course. When they learn that we are friendly, they are glad to be friends. Anybody can tame any animal if he goes to work in the right way. I once tamed a Canada lynx, and it became so used to me that I let it sleep on the foot of my bed. But the lynx has a great deal of sense and very little affection, while a horse has a great deal of affection and very little sense. With the lynx, I appealed to its good sense, but I did never—I mean, I never trusted its affection.
“I have treated this mare like a baby that does not understand much, but I have won its affection completely, and I trust that. The animal has so little sense that it would scare at a scrap of paper lying in the road, and go almost frantic if it saw a man pulling a buggy. But if I were on its back, it would not run or do anything that might throw me off. You see, one must know which is stronger in each animal—sense or sentiment. With a horse it is sentiment, so I curry the mare myself, talking to her all the while in a loving way, and I never let anybody else go into the stall. Another thing: a horse loves liberty better than anything else, so I have taken off the halter with which the mare used to be tied in her stall, and, as you know, I turn her loose every morning when she has finished her fodder, and she follows me up here to the house grounds where she is perfectly free to nibble grass. But she loves me so much that she often quits the grass and comes up here to the porch just to get me to rub her nose or stroke her neck. She is strong, and I am light, so she likes me to sit upon her back, as you have seen me do for an hour at a time. She doesn’t quite like a saddle yet—and neither do I. I would never use anything more than a blanket, just for the protection of my clothes, only that Dorothy thinks that people would wonder, if I should go visiting or to church riding bareback. Why do people wonder in that way, Mr. Kilgariff, about other people’s doings?”
“Upon my word, I don’t know, unless it is that we are all like the Pharisee in the parable, and want to emphasise our own superiority by criticising others.”
“But why shouldn’t the others criticise, too? The ways of the people they criticise are no more different from their ways, than their ways are different from those of the people they criticise. I confess I don’t quite understand.”