“I am glad to see you safe, MacPhail,” she said. “It is clear your Kelpie—don’t be alarmed; I am not going to make you part with her—but it is clear she won’t always do for you to attend me upon. Suppose now I wanted to dismount and make a call, or go into a shop?”
“There’s a sort of a friendship between your Abbot and her, my lady; she would stand all the better if I had him to hold.”
“Well, but how would you put me up again?”
“I never thought of that, my lady. Of course I daren’t let you come near Kelpie.”
“Could you trust yourself to buy another horse to ride after me about town?”
“No, my lady, not without a ten days’ trial. If lies stuck like London mud, there’s many a horse would never be seen again. But there’s Mr Lenorme! If he would go with me, I fancy between us we could do pretty well.”
“Ah! a good idea,” returned his mistress. “But what makes you think of him?” she added, willing enough to talk about him.
“The look of the gentleman and his horse together, and what I heard him say,” answered Malcolm.
“What did you hear him say?”
“That he knew he had to treat horses something like human beings. I’ve often fancied, within the last few months, that God does with some people something like as I do with Kelpie.”