But Mary didn’t hear him. Perhaps she misunderstood the reason of the chase and gave him credit for a spice of the devil in his nature. But Robert grew really desperate; he felt that the thing must be fixed up now or never, and gave his horse a free rein. Her horse was the fastest, and Robert galloped in the dust from his heels for about a mile and a half; then at the foot of a rise Mary’s horse stumbled and nearly threw her over his head, and then he stopped like the good horse he was.
Robert got down feeling instinctively that he might best make his peace on foot, and approached Mary with a face of misery—she had dropped her whip.
“Oh, Bob!” she said, “I’m knocked out;” and she slipped down into his arms and stayed there a while.
They sat on a log and rested, while their horses made inquiries of each other’s noses, and compared notes.
And after a good while Mary said “No, Bob, it’s no use talking of marrying just yet. I like you, Bob, but I could never marry you while things are as they are between your father and mine. Now, that’ll do. Let me get on my horse, Bob. I’ll be safer there.”
“Why?” asked Bob.
“Come on, Bob, and don’t be stupid.”
She met him often and “liked” him.
III.—A TRAMP’S MATCH AND WHAT IT DID
It was Christmas Eve at Wall’s, but there was no score or so of buggies and horses and dozens of strange dogs round the place as of old. The glasses and decanters were dusty on the heavy old-fashioned sideboard in the dining-room; and there was only a sullen, brooding man leaning over the hurdles and looking at his rams in the yard, and a sullen, brooding half-caste at work in the kitchen. Mary had ridden away that morning to visit a girl chum.