"Bit hide-bound still. Still cooking his food, Collett?"
"Yes, Sir Bryan."
"Feed him on corn a day or two, and let him have the boiled water warm. I'll come down this afternoon and have another look at him. Well, Flash, what do you think of him? Pretty horse, isn't he?"
"He's rather—thin, isn't he, Sir Bryan?"
"Thin?" Bryan looked down banteringly at his little cockney friend in her borrowed riding-habit. "That's a race-horse. That's Saleratus."
On New Year's Eve the Lulford party dined at Chubley, Lady Wills-Pechell's new but much photographed and be-paragraphed castle high up on Spurlock Edge. Despite the roaring log fire, there was quite a baronial rawness in the air of the dining-room, and most of the women came to dinner with lace shawls or spangled Egyptian scarves over their bare shoulders. Toward the end of dinner Lady Wills-Pechell leaned from her chair for a whispered conversation with her right-hand neighbor.
"Miss Barbour," she said. "Oh! I beg your pardon, Leslie; I meant your cousin."
Fenella, who was genuinely absorbed in the technicalities of Snip Hannaford, turned to meet her hostess's unconvincing smile.
"Miss Barbour, a little bird has been very busy lately twittering that you dance. Aren't we to be shown anything before you go back to town?"