"I can't analyze the impulse which prompted me to pay his fine and engage him."
"And after that affair at the carriage-door! Where is your pride?"
"To tell the truth, I believe he did make a mistake. Maybe I hired him because I liked his looks." Betty glanced amusedly at the groom, whose neck and ears were red. She laughed.
"You always were an extraordinary child. I do not understand it in the least. I am even worried. He may be a great criminal."
"No, not a great criminal," said Betty, recollecting the ride of that morning; "but a first-class horseman, willing and obedient. I have been forced to make James serve as butler. He has been under the hands of our cook, and I have been watching them. How I have laughed! Of all droll scenes!"
So she had laughed, eh? Warburton's jaws snapped. She had been watching, too?
"I rode Pirate this morning—"
"You rode that horse?" interrupted Mrs. Chadwick.
"Yes, and he ran away with me in fine style. If it hadn't been for the new groom, I shouldn't be here, and the dinner would be a dismal failure, with me in bed with an arm or leg broken. Heavens! I never was so frightened in all my life. We went so fast against the wind that I could scarce breathe. And when it was all over, I fainted like a ninny."
"Fainted! I should have thought you would. I should have fallen off the animal and been killed. Betty, you certainly have neither forethought nor discretion. The very idea of your attempting to ride that animal!"