She seemed not to notice his sarcasm, although his tones rang with it.
"Your going to work for father—I think it was brave of you. If it makes any difference at all it will be because you make it do so. I should be glad to have you ride with me as a companion if you wish."
She pricked her horse with her spur and rode on. And Conniston, after a brief moment of hesitation in which he began to see that he had been acting rather foolishly, galloped up to her side.
"I am afraid I have been boorish, Miss Crawford. You must forgive me."
"In three weeks you have learned a great deal, but there is still a great deal which you do not seem to have assimilated."
"I have learned—" There was a question in his unfinished sentence.
"You have learned to ride as a man must who is to do his day's work of twelve, maybe fifteen, hours in the saddle. Surely that is something. You have learned to rope a steer on the dead run. You have learned to rope your own horse, to throw him while you saddle him, and to ride him when he gets up. You have learned to work."
He stared at her in surprise.
"How do you know what I have been doing?"
She laughed, a happy gurgle of a laugh which made a man want to laugh with her without knowing the cause of her merriment.