Part 2, Chapter VIII.
A Visit from Brother Jock.
“Well,” said Smithson, the tailor, as he looked up from a square patch that he was inserting in the seat of a fellow-townsman’s trousers, “the parson has his faults, and as a family I don’t like ’em, but when they’re down it do make a difference to the town.”
This was as the cobble stones of the little place rattled to the beating of horses’ hoofs, while a bright-looking little equestrian party passed along the main street; Cynthia mounted on a favourite mare belonging to Lord Artingale, one which she was always pleading to ride, and one whereon her slave loved to see her, though he always sent her over to the rectory in fear and trembling, ordering the groom who took her to give her a good gallop on the way to tame her down.
Not that there was the slightest disposition to vice in the beautiful little creature, she was only spirited, or, as the people in his lordship’s stable said, “a bit larky,” and when Cynthia was mounted there was plenty of excuse for the young man’s pride.
“I shall never have patience to ride an old plodding, humble-stumble horse again, Harry,” the little maiden used to say. “It’s like sitting on air; and she is such a dear, and it’s a shame to put two such great bits in her mouth.”
“It is only so that you might check her easily, Cynthy,” said Artingale, anxiously. “You need not mind; with such a hand as yours at the rein they don’t hurt her mouth.”
“But I’m sure they do, Harry,” cried Cynthia; “and look how she champs them up, and what a foam she makes, and when she snorts and throws up her head it flies over my new riding-habit.”