Gay, looking between her horse's ears, waiting for the uplifted hand of the constable to fall, and release the traffic, turned pale. There are some debts of honour more binding than the friend's I.O.U. that is never presented, and Gay felt that Carlton's was one of them—a queer prophetic instinct told her that this Horse Show was to be the turning point of her life.
"I was glad to find Mr. Hannen so much better when I went to see him yesterday," went on Rensslaer. "He told me he hoped to be well enough to call on you next week"—here he ducked, and disappeared as the policeman's hand fell, but Lossie, whose ears were quick, was in the seventh heaven of delight.
Carlton was coming back; Chris, whose absence and misfortune had melted Gay's heart, thinned her body, and almost quenched her bloom, was appearing once more on the scene—everything promised well.
CHAPTER XXIII
AT ELSINORE
After all, it was chance that dictated Gay should go to Elsinore, or rather the accident of Rensslaer's having cut in just before the Professor, and obtained a certain rare edition that the latter greatly coveted. He would cheerfully have started for Kamschatka to read or borrow it; Elsinore was nearer, and when Gay mentioned the invitation, he jumped at it, and went.
So one fine morning in May found brother and sister in the train, and Rensslaer waited for them at the station with a pair of magnificent Trotting horses, harnessed to a light road wagon of hickory wood and steel. Inviting Gay to share the very small seat with him, he pointed out, to the Professor's intense relief, a sober open carriage for the latter's use.
"Take care, Gay," Frank cried quaveringly after her, as she squeezed in beside Rensslaer, and the next moment, her host's hands twisted into the loops of the reins, they were sweeping through the silent streets, and out on to the open road, the air whistling in their ears, the dust striking Gay's eyes and cheeks like pellets, the country almost indistinguishable as they flew past, and the sensation so thrilling that she surrendered herself to it in complete enjoyment.
Smoothly as a sleigh on snow, rode the frail vehicle of less than a hundred pounds, and record-makers both, were the powerful steeds that guided by the imperturbable driver with arms outstretched, swift as the wind, swept up hill and down dale, only once beaten by a motor that was afterwards overtaken, and then Rensslaer eased his steeds, remarking that they had covered five miles in twelve minutes.
By then they were in his park, and the horses went more quietly, so that Gay had leisure to observe the sylvan beauty of the landscape surrounding Elsinore, to notice the herds of deer visible in every direction, and also his Indian fighting cocks, who roamed his fields in intermittent warfare with the old English game. Somehow Gay felt that all were sharers in that instinct of friendliness which seemed to inspire his relations, not only with all his dumb retainers, but with his fellow-humans as well.